Much Ado About Magic Read online

  Benedick pulled the Hummer up short about an inch and a half from the glass window. Pedro stepped out first. Then Claudio came out and stood just a half step behind Pedro, which is the way it always is with the Arragon money and the Florentine strength. And truth last of all, with Benedick, all smiles, waving at the crowd that had gathered for him.

  It was a grand entrance of the sort that Mr. Brower, our theater teacher, would have tried to do for a big musical production. There was sudden, thundering applause.

  It was really, really annoying.

  I worked hard on keeping my face absolutely blank.

  That was when Ben looked toward me. No, more than that. He stared at me for a long moment, and I stared back. It was only after he looked away that I realized I had done exactly the wrong thing. I had made it seem like I had wanted him to look at me, like I had been waiting for him, watching for him, like everyone else.

  I should have walked off to my locker and made sure I never turned back. I should have had a book in my hands and stood on the other side of the commons, engrossed in it. I should have been chatting animatedly with Margaret and Ursula, laughing at something that was truly, truly funny.

  I turned to the side just a bit and could see Margaret standing with her mouth wide open and Ursula with her eyes wide, as if she were one of those little fan girls who stand outside of a bathroom or any place they can to get a sight of their favorite pop star.

  At least I hadn’t stayed home from school today and called in sick.

  Pedro lifted a hand and grinned, acknowledging his subjects.

  Claudio smiled and his face went red. Despite all his muscles, he had the worst baby face you have ever seen. I think he could pass for eleven if he wanted to. It will probably be really annoying when he’s in college and gets carded at every bar he walks into. Right now, it makes him look like an utter innocent, like everyone’s kid brother.

  “Isn’t he the cutest thing?” I heard a girl next to me comment.

  “Makes you want to just run over and kiss him, doesn’t it?” said her friend.

  It made me want to kiss him, all right. And then vomit right into his open mouth.

  Pedro stood back apart from everyone for another moment, and then he caught sight of me, too. Before he got enveloped in the well-wishers, he stepped toward me.

  “Pedro,” I said.

  “Beatrice,” he said. “Good to see you again. You look great. As always.” A big smile. There was a time when it would have made me melt. It felt like it had been years ago, strangely enough.

  I was surprised. I had prepared to see him again and to show no reaction. But I had expected to feel something for him still. If not what I felt before, then anger. Or sadness. Or even embarrassment.

  Instead I felt nothing at all.

  “You look—tan,” I said.

  “We should talk sometime,” he said. “Catch up on all the things we missed in each other’s lives over the summer.”

  “Sure,” I said. “When you can fit it in.”

  “You know, I thought about you a lot, Beatrice. While I was gone. I wished—” He reached out and touched my shoulder.

  I flinched. It was just for a micro second, before I got myself under control again. In all my replays of this moment, I had never imagined that he would try to touch me. The only time he had touched me before was that lame kiss he had given me while I was under the truth spell. “I was busy, actually. Although I am sure you thought that all the girls in the school would have spent the entire summer thinking about you,” I said, my voice hard.

  Pedro sighed. I could see a hint of pain in his face, and then he moved on, into the crowd of friends who were waiting to greet him.

  I meant to leave quickly, but I lingered for a moment. And then I noticed that Benedick had come to stand beside me.

  What did he think he was doing there?

  “I thought about you, too, Beatrice,” he said.

  I snorted at that. “Was the food that bad in Europe? Did you get indigestion often?”

  “Not the food so much as the boats,” said Benedick, clutching at his stomach and making a sick face.

  “You think yourself above all the rest of the world, don’t you? Even your friends Claudio and Pedro,” I said.

  “I think myself above you,” said Benedick. “Though it does not take much to rise above a toadstool.”

  I stiffened at that. Was he commenting on my looks? Well, what did I care? I wasn’t interested in superficial guys like Benedick, and I wasn’t sure there was any other type now that Pedro had shown his true colors. “I shall gladly be a toadstool if it means that I am low enough to see how low others are,” I said.

  “Then we are both low together,” said Benedick. “So we shall neither of us be lonely.”

  “Oh, the low are never good companions,” I said. “All they want is to pull others down to their own station.”

  “I wasn’t pulling you down. I was showing you the truth. You should thank me for it.”

  “Because the truth is such a gift? Why did you not use it on your dear friend Pedro, then? Or on yourself?”

  “Not all of us feel obliged to use a magic spell at every moment,” said Benedick.

  I was infuriated. I burned. And that burning gave me a sudden inspiration.

  I started saying the beauty spell under my breath, then flung it at him. I wasn’t used to doing that, giving my spell to someone else, but I’d done it a couple of times before. Never to a guy, however. Other people in the Hero clan might use the spell to get favors, but not me.

  I was amused to see how it turned out. Some people can make beauty spells work on men and women differently. Apparently, I couldn’t.

  I was now looking at a very beautiful Benedick. His hair was nicely curled around his ears and his cheeks were a fetching shade of pink, his lips a darker version of the same.

  I giggled.

  I wasn’t the only one.

  Turnabout is fair play, yes?

  People all through the school were pointing at Benedick and laughing—like they had been at me last year.

  “What was that?” he asked, putting his hand to his face.

  “That was the music of my thanks for your help with Pedro. I have no other instrument but my magic, I’m afraid. I hope you take it in the manner in which it was intended.”

  “You didn’t?” said Benedick, now using his hands to cover his face.

  I smiled beautifully. “Oh, but I did. How could I resist? Your mother would love to see your face. I’m sure it would remind her of your sweeter days. When you were a baby, and quieter.”

  He glared at me and made his exit.

  The beauty spell wouldn’t last that long. He would survive the day at school, I was sure. The only real problem was if Leanata heard about it, because she would use it to prove that I could use the beauty spell perfectly well, and often. So long as I had the right motivation.

  Still, it had been worth whatever the consequences were with Leanata, times a thousand. Though I wouldn’t depend on Benedick being able to count that high.

  Chapter 4: Ben

  I went to the bathroom and saw what Beatrice had done to my face. Ha, ha, very funny.

  I still had red cheeks, but at least the hair was my normal blonde color again, and short enough to stand up on end in the front. I could go find someone in the Hero clan and try to trade something to go back to my normal look, but I didn’t want to use the truth spell that way. And besides, the look would fade.

  “Benedick? What’s going on? Is there something wrong?” asked Pedro, when he came in search of me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I was not going to let on that Beatrice had the power to do anything to bother me. Pedro would make it into a project, talking to the Hero demi-head of our town, Leanata, and then Beatrice would be forced to apologize to me in front of everyone. And I knew what would happen. She would laugh at me and make some comment that would make me feel like I was a fool for thinking I had succeeded in hu
mbling her.

  Someday I would figure out what to do to make her stop bothering me. If it hadn’t worked with the truth spell, though, I didn’t know what it would be.

  For the assembly, the principal asked each of us to speak in one of the languages we’d learned while abroad.

  Claudio stammered out a few words in German, something about another beer, which was about all he’d learned there. Pedro did Spanish and said he had never seen such beauty in his life. Very Pedro.

  I spoke in Italian, and I was pretty sure there weren’t more than a handful of people who understood what I said.

  “Love is—” I said “—the devil’s own creation. If not for love, we would all be back in the Garden. We left paradise for a woman, and was it worth it? Never. I swear that there is no woman beautiful enough to tempt me into falling in love. I need a girlfriend like a fish needs an oxygen tent.”

  “You mean like a fish needs a bicycle!” shouted a voice in Italian.

  I glanced up and saw that it was Beatrice herself. Apparently, she was the only person in the whole school who spoke Italian. Just my luck.

  “Like a crab needs scissors,” I amended.

  “Like a piano needs a hammer,” said Beatrice.

  “Like a book needs bubbles,” I said.

  “Like a woman needs a man!” said Beatrice.

  I could see the whole assembly of faces turning back and forth between me and Beatrice, waiting to see who would win this time. They had all been there last year, or had heard about it. Even the teachers and the principal knew what was going on.

  “Like a man needs a headache,” I said, and held up a couple of aspirin and swallowed them with the water that had been left by the podium for me.

  “That’s it. Take your medicine!” Beatrice shouted. “Like a man.”

  This could go on forever, I thought. So I cleared my throat and stepped away from the microphone.

  There was applause, but I was acutely aware of the fact that it was as much for Beatrice as it was for me.

  After the assembly, I saw her leave quickly and felt relief combined with disappointment. I admit, when Beatrice was in the room, I was never bored. I could not say the same for most of the other kids at school who came up to congratulate us on our speeches.

  The principal, who was a lower-ranking member of the Messina clan, thanked us, too, and then we were supposed to go to classes. He treated all the demi-heads of the clans at the school gently, though. He couldn’t really make us do anything.

  “Ah, the first day of school,” said Pedro. “Home sweet home.”

  “It’s not so bad,” said Claudio.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Donny’s, anyone?”

  “Skipping classes already?” said Claudio.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll ask someone what I missed. Later.” Though the first day of class was usually just getting to know you games and handing out syllabuses.

  “All right,” said Claudio. “I need to talk to you two about something private anyway.”

  Talk? Claudio had a huge heart and he was a guy you’d want on your side in a mess, but talking wasn’t usually something he did much of.

  We headed out the back doors and toward the football field. Donny’s is an old gas station converted into a fast food dive. They make great shakes, and everything else is mediocre. But it’s a lot better than the regular cafeteria food. And it’s off campus, so that makes a huge difference. Like eating a sandwich inside a jail versus outside a jail.

  “So, what’s up?” asked Pedro as we walked.

  Claudio shrugged.

  “You’re going to have to tell us. We don’t have time to learn sign language.”

  “It’s—complicated,” said Claudio.

  “Yeah, right. That means it’s about a girl,” I said.

  Claudio let out a long breath.

  “Let’s get him some food first. He’ll need it for sustenance,” said Pedro.

  So we left him alone until we had ordered at Donny’st. Double bacon burgers all around, chili cheese fries, and chocolate chocolate chip shakes. Pedro ordered, and he always assumed we wanted the same things he did. He was almost right. I actually liked raspberry chocolate shakes better, but not enough to remind him about it.

  Claudio started eating. He may look like he’s a kid, but he puts away food like you wouldn’t believe. It’s all those muscles. In a few minutes, he was stretched out, a hand to his stomach. He belched loudly. Pedro belched, too. They looked at me and I let one out louder than both of theirs put together.

  “You’re going to get us kicked out of Donny’s,” said Pedro, clapping me on the back.

  “I have to keep up my rep,” I said. Everyone knew I had no manners. Paduans never do.

  “This is supposed to be about Claudio,” Pedro reminded me. He turned. “So who is she?” he asked. “Just tell me the name and I’ll make sure you have a date with her. No matter what it costs.”

  “I don’t want it to be like that,” said Claudio, though he probably knew Pedro wasn’t serious.

  “A name,” said Pedro. “I need a name.”

  Claudio opened his mouth and turned bright red. His lips were pressed tightly together.

  “Starts with a ‘b’?” asked Pedro, pressing his lips together like Claudio’s.

  B? The only name I could think of at that moment was Beatrice, and I felt a moment of cold fear. It was purely worry for Claudio’s sake. If he had fallen in love with Beatrice, there was nothing either Pedro or I could do to help him. She might not hate him as much as she hated us, but that wasn’t saying much. Beatrice, it seemed, had a very deep capacity for hate, and an even larger one for expressing it.

  Luckily, Claudio shook his head.

  “Come on, get it out. We can’t help you unless we know,” said Pedro.

  “It’s impossible,” said Claudio.

  “Nothing is impossible. We have three different kinds of magic between us,” said Pedro. “Well, two and a half, right, Ben?”

  Very funny. Almost everyone thought of the Paduans as the least magical of the five clans, just because we had magic that was about truth, which not everyone wanted. We made great judges, but no one wanted a lawyer with a truth spell or a politician, either. If it was during a war, everyone wanted Paduans because they could be used to ferret out the spies. These days Paduans sometimes became writers, but they never sold that well. People didn’t want to read about the truth much. So we were left with security jobs of various kinds that didn’t pay well.

  “She’s young,” said Claudio.

  “A freshman?” said Pedro.

  “Sophomore,” said Claudio, shaking his head.

  “And how long have you liked her without telling us? You couldn’t have fallen so hard after ten minutes at school,” I said. Pedro and I had set Claudio up on half a dozen dates last year and they never seemed to work out. Claudio was nice and no one stormed off or anything, but there were no sparks, no second dates. Maybe I should have been using the truth spell on him, too.

  “A sophomore. Pretty, yes?” asked Pedro.

  Claudio nodded and rubbed at his face. He looked miserable.

  “Let me think,” said Pedro.

  “Just tell us,” I said. “Is she a Hero?”

  Claudio nodded.

  The work he was making me do here! “If you like her enough to date her, you’re going to have to do more than say her name,” I pointed out. “So you might as well get on with it.” I could think of half a dozen gorgeous sophomore Heros he might be thinking about.

  “Sarah,” he said at last.

  “Sarah Hero?” I echoed. She was not one of the ones on my list. Not that she wasn’t pretty. It was just that she was so shy you hardly noticed her. Though come to think of it, it made sense. She would be a good match for Claudio.

  “She’s cute,” said Pedro. “That button nose. Those cute eyes. The curve of her—”

  I jogged Pedro’s elbow. Sometimes he could go a little too far
in describing a woman’s fairest attributes. “Cute,” I said.

  Pedro nodded. “So, what’s stopping you?”

  “You mean, besides the fact that she has no idea who I am?” said Claudio in a whispered voice.

  “Oh, come on. Of course she knows who you are. You’re a demi-head of the Florentine clan.”

  “What does she care about that?” said Claudio.

  “All girls care about that. You’re Mr. Muscle,” I said.

  Claudio shook his head. “She’s different from other girls,” he said. “I don’t know what she likes. I don’t know how to act around her. I can barely get a word out.”

  That sounded like Claudio all right. “Well, it sounds challenging,” I said. “Let me think about it.”

  I could have given some great suggestion, but Pedro interrupted me. “I can do it,” he said. “No problem. I’ll take care of this problem for you. I’ll make sure she wants to go out with you.”

  “What? How?” said Claudio.

  “Uh,” I said, thinking I had a bad feeling about this.

  “I’ll go to the dance this weekend and I’ll find her. Talk to her a little, dance with her. See if she’s interested.”

  Claudio stared at Pedro. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Of course. No problem. Ben here will help me.”

  “I will?” I said, nervous. Was he going to ask me to use my truth spell on her, to see if she really liked Claudio back? I wasn’t sure that was a great idea.

  “You can talk about Claudio’s best points. You’re good at stuff like that,” said Pedro.

  At talking, he meant. I was the one they both asked to help them with essays and anything that had to do with English. One of the stereotypes about Paduans that was actually true. Though that didn’t explain why Beatrice Hero was so good with words.

  “OK,” I said.

  “What if she—?” Claudio asked, his face going so pale it was a transparent look into his brain and heart.

  “It’s going to be fine, isn’t it, Ben? We’ll make sure that she goes out with you.”

  “But maybe she doesn’t—” said Claudio.

  “She does, she does. Why wouldn’t she want to go out with you? You’re an important guy at school. You’re good looking, smart, and nice.” The way Pedro talked, it was all just a matter of checking off boxes. I wasn’t sure it was like that. Not that I had any great experience there. Or wanted it.