Julia S. Mandala is a reformed lawyer who does penance by writing fantasy and science fiction. Her works appear in The Four Redheads of the Apocalypse, Dracula's Lawyer, International House of Bubbas, Houston, We've Got Bubbas, and Flush Fiction, available from Yard Dog Press, in The Four Redheads: Apocalypse Now! and House of Doors, coming soon from YDP, and in Best of the Bubbas from BenBella Books. Her other stories have appeared in The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II, MZB's Fantasy Magazine and Adventures of Sword & Sorcery. She is a scuba diver, underwater photographer and belly dancer.
Drake opened the door to the high school counselor's office. His mother flounced past him in a miniskirt and camisole. The Dread Witch Tiffany Owens of Beverly Hills currently possessed the body of a fifteen-year-old girl—magic only witches could do, and then only for themselves. Drake wished Tiffany hadn't chosen someone his age for her disguise. Seeing his mother in a nubile, scantily clad body made him distinctly uncomfortable.
The counselor, a round-cheeked woman with spectacles, looked up from the papers on her desk. "Hello, Carmen. And this young man must be Nigel Churchill, the new exchange student."
"Huh?" Drake said, then grunted as Tiffany slammed her elbow into his ribs. "Uh, yes."
"I'm Mrs. Jones," the woman said.
"What a rare and beautiful name," Drake said.
Mrs. Jones smiled slyly. "Aren't you the charming one!"
Tiffany blinked in surprise, then surveyed her son critically. "Charming? I'm, like, so sure. Not!" Tiffany lowered her voice. " 'Nigel,' can't you slouch even a little? It looks like that stick up your butt goes clear into your skull."
Over the past three days on the run, a revelation had struck Drake. While his mother might or might not love him, she most definitely didn't like him.
"My parents," Drake said, giving Tiffany a resentful glare, "paid thousands of ducats to send me to a school where slovenly behavior was punished by beating with a thumb-thick rod."
"That's child abuse!" Mrs. Jones exclaimed. "You should report that school to the authorities."
"As if," Drake muttered, using one of Tiffany's favorite phrases.
Tiffany rolled her eyes. "Don't even go there. You just sound like even more of a total dork."
Mrs. Jones wrinkled her forehead. "You said 'ducats.' Don't they use pounds in England?"
Drake winced even before Tiffany cast him a scornful look. In less than five sentences, he had already made a foolish error that could ruin their disguise.
Tiffany looked at the large wall clock, then raised her hands to her cheeks. "Ohmygawd! If we don't, like, hurry, we'll totally be late for first period."
Late periods were bad. Not being from this dimension, Drake wasn't sure why, but he'd overheard Tiffany saying that to her handmaiden once.
"Let's print your schedule, Nigel," Mrs. Jones said, her fingers dancing over a board covered with letters and numbers.
Tiffany had used her magic to conjure faked transcripts and to assure that "Nigel" was in the same classes as "Carmen."
Mrs. Jones hmmed. "Nigel Churchill. Any relation to . . ." She trailed off as though Drake should know the last word.
"No way," Tiffany said, then whispered to Drake, "I like, you know, never thought people would still remember that dude. He's been dead forever."
"What dude?" Drake asked, but his mother ignored him.
"Is it retro '80s day, Carmen?" Mrs. Jones asked. At Tiffany's puzzled look, the secretary said, "I just assumed, since you're talking like a valley girl."
"Bitch," Tiffany said under her breath, then louder, "It's just, like, you know, a phase that's gotten into me."
His mother had been going through that "phase" all of Drake's life. The Dread Witch Tiffany was the most powerful witch in Drake's home dimension of Zirconia, and she felt no pressure to conform.
"Everything is in order—Oh, wait." Mrs. Jones chuckled. "Someone put Nigel in girl's gymnastics. That won't do."
Drake didn't really care what courses the school assigned him. He had no desire to attend Olathe High. It had no magic courses of any sort. Every day Drake spent away from Evil Academy, he fell farther behind in his sorcerous studies.
His mother had dragged Drake away from boarding school after Scolon the Scabrous sent henchmen to kidnap Drake. The evil sorcerer's plot came within a hair of succeeding, before the dean, a demon of significant powers, blasted Scolon's henchmen to cinders. Tiffany had thought it best to take Drake into hiding until Drake's father and older brothers dealt with the rival sorcerer. Spells made with the body parts of relatives rendered the victims particularly vulnerable, and Drake's parents were taking no chances. Having no desire to be chopped into spell components, Drake had only put up a token fuss. After a series of portal hops to throw off any pursuit, Tiffany and Drake had materialized in her home dimension, where she knew they could blend in and disappear until it was safe.
Drake wasn't so sure.
"Can you just, like, put Nigel in some gym class for dudes, like dodge ball?" Tiffany asked.
"Well, Carmen, I'm so pleased to see you taking an interest in helping someone else," Mrs. Jones said. "You're really growing into a mature young woman."
"Mature! Gag me with a spoon!" Tiffany's face screwed into a grimace. "That is like, the meanest thing anyone's ever said to me."
Mrs. Jones's smile stiffened. "You should learn to take a compliment gracefully."
"Whatever," Tiffany said with a dismissive wave. "So what classes are open during the period I have gymnastics?"
"Botany, political science, auto shop, remedial sex education—"
"No way!" Tiffany exclaimed.
"Way," Mrs. Jones said gamely. "It's for pregnant girls, jocks and anyone who admits to contracting V.D."
"I've never taken a remedial class for anything," Drake said, seizing on the one concept he understood. The flood of strange terms left him dazed. It sounded like the same language he spoke, yet he only understood half of it—the half that was participles and pronouns.
"Have you ever had sex-ed, Nigel?" Mrs. Jones asked.
Drake's face went hot.
"The British totally don't teach that stuff in school," Tiffany said.
"Then, we'll put Nigel in remedial sexual education," Mrs. Jones said. "I think he'll find it beneficial."
After Drake and Tiffany left the office, she looked over Drake's printed class schedule. "Trig, physics, glee club? This is the worst . . . schedule . . . ever!" Tiffany looked over the body she occupied. "You'd think someone with such a bitchin' bod would take classes that matter, like cheerleading and drama. Good acting will get you out of a lot of sketchy situations."
Drake fidgeted in the unfamiliar fitted clothing—jeans, a T-shirt and a striped shirt which for some reason he wasn't allowed to button or tuck. The sneakers, at least, were far more comfortable than the slippers that boys of noble birth wore.
"You're quite certain this is what young men wear in this dimension?" Drake asked.
"I'm like totally certain no one in Olathe, Kansas says 'quite certain,' " Tiffany said. "Anyway, that's what the rad dudes are wearing on the boob tube."
She must have been right, because the glances Drake received from several passing girls held speculative interest rather than scorn. Every young man that passed ogled his mother's half-clothed body. Drake resisted the urge to smack the lust off their faces, since he and his mother were trying to be inconspicuous. He suspected Carmen didn't usually wear such skimpy clothing. After looking in Carmen's wardrobe, Tiffany had bewitched Carmen's mother into giving her a "platinum card," which in this world was treated more like gold.
"Okay, first period is trig," Tiffany said, ignoring the goggle-eyed boys. Then again, she was used to that kind of attention. "Trig is, like, a bogus kind of math."
Drake's stomach twisted into a knot. "I don't know 'trig.' "
"Don't have a cow," Tiffany said. "Teachers always cut the new kids some slack. If anyone looks at you funny, just tell them you're British. That should totally explain why you seem like an airhead."
Drake's worries eased when the trig teacher didn't so much as address a question to him, merely gave him a textbook and the next assignment. When the same thing happened in physics class, Drake felt secure in leaving Tiffany to go to remedial sex education.
She pointed to double doors marked "Gymnasium." "If, like, anything sketchy happens, you bug out to the gym and find me. Don't try to take on Scolon's men yourself."
Drake rolled his eyes.
"I'm majorly serious, young man. For real. If you think you can take on grown sorcerers with years of spell-casting experience, you're trippin', dude."
"I think I can manage to keep my feet," Drake said drily.
"Dork," Tiffany muttered, then headed into the gym.
Drake gritted his teeth. She treated him like a child. He doubted his mother knew he had the best grades in his year and was in advanced studies. But Drake didn't push himself in hopes of receiving his parents' approval—to attain that, his parents would have to notice Drake's existence other than during holidays and crises. He pushed himself so that one day he could subjugate a land of his own and have hordes of evil minions doing his bidding.
Drake found the classroom right as the bell rang. Six pregnant girls, twenty burly young men, and eight other bored-looking teens were already seated. Drake took a desk at the back and slouched down. This class might be the only one that wasn't a waste of his time. He knew what sex was, but judging from the girl's disappointed expression the one time he'd stolen a kiss, he could use some additional knowledge. Actually, her disappointment hadn't bothered him nearly as much as her pity.
A man in beige pants and a knit shirt strode in. "All right, everyone, settle down." His gaze locked on Drake. "I see we have a new inmate."
"I'm Nigel Churchill, from England," Drake said.
"Any relation to . . ."
"No way," Drake said, parroting his mother's answer for lack of a better one.
"I'm Coach Smith," the teacher said.
"Coach. What an unusual name."
The class laughed as though Drake had made a clever jest.
"Well, Nigel," Coach Smith said cheerily. "Let's see what you know."
"What?" A heated flush crept up Drake's neck to his cheeks. The only things Drake had heard about sex came from the highly suspect bragging of upperclassmen at Evil Academy.
"Okay, Nigel, you're on a date," Coach Smith said. "The girl is smokin' hot and willing. You don't have a condom. What do you do?" He gave Drake a meaningful stare. "What do you do?"
The disoriented feeling swept across Drake again. "Throw a wet blanket over her to douse the fire?"
The class laughed again, and not in a nice way. "What a dumbass," one burly boy whispered to another.
"Now, now," Coach Smith said, clapping his hands for silence. "While Nigel may be clowning around, at least his answer showed concern for the young lady."
Several of the pregnant girls smiled at Drake, and a few boys shifted in their seats.
"Okay, how about this, Nigel?" Coach Smith said. "Your girlfriend has herpes, but she's not currently having an outbreak. Is it safe to have sex with her?"
A girl smirked and raised her hand.
"Yes, Hannah?"
"Does he have a condom?" she asked, then giggled.
"No, but assume she's on the Pill," Coach Smith said. "So, Nigel, is it safe sex?"
"No?" Drake ventured.
"Are you guessing, Nigel?"
"Yes, sir." Drake bowed his head and braced himself. Getting caught guessing at Evil Academy carried painful consequences. The consequences for lying about guessing were even more severe. The school motto was, "Nothing encourages learning like a good whack on the head."
"At least you erred on the side of caution, which is what you should always do in a sexual situation," Coach Smith said. "And, as it happens, you guessed correctly. It is not safe. You get a prize." He pulled a small square package from his desk drawer and threw it to Drake. Printed on the crinkly plastic wrapping was the word "Trojan." Drake felt a flexible, raised circle inside.
His classmates snickered. "Jeez, he really is a dumbass," another boy said, loud enough for Drake to hear.
"Thank you, sir," Drake said, hastily stuffing the Trojan in his backpack, beside his new books, his wand and the bottle of animation potion he had brewed at prep school.
After remedial sex education, Drake was actually relieved to find his mother outside the classroom.
"How'd it go?" she asked, giving him a teasing grin. "Learn anything?"
"I won a prize." Drake dug out the Trojan.
"Ohmygawd! Like, high school has totally changed." Looking around in mortification, Tiffany snatched the Trojan and stuffed it into his backpack again. "Don't be waving that around. I mean, barf me out!"
Drake shrugged off his mother's histrionics. He had to admit—at times, he didn't like her much either. "The schedule says we have lunch now."
"Don't get all excited," Tiffany said. "High school cafeterias have the worst . . . food . . . ever."
Drake snorted. "You don't have to tell me that. I'm used to eating three meals a day at a prep school dining hall."
The array of foreign foods in the cafeteria left Drake as mystified as the rest of the day had. At Evil Academy, one ate what the troll chef cooked. It didn't pay to insult a troll, especially one adept at using large knives.
Tiffany pushed Drake in the back. "Just pick something, you spaz."
"What do you think I'd like?" Drake asked.
"It all sucks," Tiffany said, earning a glare from a cafeteria worker sporting plastic gloves.
Drake nodded glumly. "The food must be bad if it isn't even safe to touch."
"Hey, we only have thirty minutes for lunch, asshole," someone shouted.
"He'll have pizza," Tiffany said. At Drake's quizzical look, she said, "It's flatbread and cheese. They can't screw that up too bad."
The dried-out square slapped onto his shiny metal tray belied his mother's claim. Herding him along, Tiffany added a carton labeled 'milk' to Drake's tray.
"It, like, builds strong bones and teeth," Tiffany said.
Drake smirked. "I'm stunned that you care."
"You think I want a toothless hunchback for a son? Puh-leez!"
As they headed toward long tables and plastic chairs, two girls waved.
"Carmen!" one shouted. "Come sit with us! And bring your cute friend."
Tiffany looked askance at Drake. "Is everyone here, like, totally lacking in standards?"
"Maybe to girls under the age of thirty, I'm handsome," Drake said.
Tiffany cast him a scorching glare. "What-ever!" She stomped toward the two girls who had waved.
Drake started to follow, but stopped when a strange man appeared in the nearest cafeteria doorway. Between his black robes, the evil smirk and the wand aimed at Tiffany's back, Drake surmised the man was one of Scolon's sorcerers. The robed man spoke an incantation for casting a magic bolt. Drake lunged and thrust out the metal tray, sending his pizza and milk flying. The bolt deflected off the metal surface, hitting the ceiling and sending down a shower of dust. A shock jolted through Drake. He fell, twitching, onto his pizza, which had landed cheese-side up. Idiot, he berated himself. Metal didn't just reflect magic; it conducted it. He had received enough of the deadly bolt's energy to leave him helpless.
Tiffany whirled and whipped a wand from her purse. "Clean the tables," she incanted. Witches knew lots of housekeeping spells. Food, trays, cups, and plasticware rose into the air. Tiffany flicked her wrist and everything went flying at the sorcerer. He threw himself to the floor, but two more sorcerers rounded the corner in time to be pelted with half-eaten food, soda cans, milk cartons, sporks and metal trays. Tiffany levitated a chair and sent it flying. It knocked one food-blinded sorcerer across the hall and through a plate-glass window.
Tiffany pumped her fist. "Suh-WEET!"
Students screamed and stumbled over chairs and each other toward the cafeteria's other exit. Drake's muscles still twitched from the magic shock. He could only flounder and hope no one stepped on him. A sneaker quickly crushed that hope—and Drake's toes.
"All right, you douche bags," Tiffany said, advancing on the two remaining sorcerers. "I'm so going postal on your asses."
The sorcerer on the floor gripped an amulet around his neck and muttered an incantation. A protective shield glowed to life around him. He stood, a chuckle rumbling in his throat. Drake felt a stab of envy. Such a laugh would earn perfect marks in Evil Mannerisms class.
The Dread Witch Tiffany glared at the sorcerer. "Don't think that protection spell will save you, Scolon. No way some barf bag threatens my little dude and walks. So, like, what did Drake do that gave us away?"
Drake wanted to protest, but managed only a feeble growl.
"It wasn't him, my dear," Scolon said, giving Tiffany a smug smile. "It was you."
"Me?" Tiffany huffed. "As if."
"I created a spell that homed in on your outmoded speech patterns," Scolon said. "After we scared the wits out of a middle-aged waitress in San Fernando Valley, it led us straight to you."
Tiffany's eyes narrowed. She turned her wand on a table. "Move it!"
The table scuttled forward like a flat-topped cockroach. It bounced off Scolon's protective shield, swung into the remaining food-covered sorcerer, then squashed him against the cinder block wall.
Scolon the Scabrous pulled a different amulet from his robe pocket. Drake tried to shout a warning, but his thick tongue defeated him.
A determined scowl on her borrowed face, Tiffany drew back her wand. Before she could speak an incantation, Scolon said, "Ice queen."
"Douche—" Tiffany didn't get to finish her epithet as the amulet's pre-made spell kicked in. Ice spread across her skin and frosted her hair and clothes, freezing her like a statue.
"By the Darkness," Drake swore, then realized his voice had returned. His hands still trembled and his brain was too muddled to use his wand. When Scolon used the second amulet it canceled the protection amulet's spell, a weakness of amulets, but Drake couldn't take advantage—
The animation potion! Drake groped in his backpack, pushing aside the fat physics book. His fingers wrapped around the stoppered potion bottle.
Scolon paused to admire his frozen handiwork, then broke off a chunk of Tiffany/Carmen's frozen hair. At least someone was having a good time.
Drake felt the crinkle of plastic. He clamped the Trojan against the potion bottle with his fingers, then extracted both from the backpack. He set down the potion and tore open the Trojan's plastic wrapper. A rolled rubber tube dropped into his palm.
Scolon started toward Drake, his eyes gleaming with amusement. "What sort of evil sorcerer throws himself in the path of a lightning bolt meant for another? I never thought I'd see the Dread Witch Tiffany's son acting like an idiot hero."
Scolon had a point. Pushing aside shame, Drake unstoppered the bottle and poured potion on the rubber tube. "Virat!" he intoned.
The rubber tube unrolled on its own, then air rushed in. The tube grew longer and fatter. For some reason, Drake felt suddenly stronger and more manly.
Scolon stared at the burgeoning tube. "You must be joking." He raised his wand. "Now I will stun you, take you back to my lair and cut you into spell components—"
The Trojan bent in the middle, then whipped forward, striking Scolon's hand. His wand clattered to the floor.
From under a lunchroom table, a boy yelled, "Wow, Trojans really are strong!"
The ice around Tiffany was melting, but not fast enough.
Drake willed the rubber tube to wind around Scolon's right wrist. When Scolon reached to pull it free, the rest of it whipped around his left wrist. The ends stretched and wrapped around the sorcerer's waist, binding his hands to his body.
Scolon smiled at Drake. "Fairly impressive for one of your tender years."
"You talk too much." Drake's instructors always harped on how that was a common weakness among villains.
"Perhaps so, my dear boy, but you have missed one important fact," Scolon said, casting an assessing glance at the water dripping off Tiffany.
"What fact is that?" Drake asked, his fingers curling loosely around his wand, though he wasn't sure whether his wits had recovered enough to use it.
"The condom you used was lubricated." Scolon shimmied his wrists free.
"Why in the Nine Hells would anyone lubricate a rubber tube?" Drake demanded in frustration.
"Why, for her pleasure, of course." Scolon laughed until he grabbed his sides. "Delightful. What a pity I can't keep you alive for my amusement, but you're far more useful in pieces."
Tiffany's little finger wiggled. Drake had to stall.
"Of all four sons, why did you choose me?" he asked.
"You're the most powerful, and not as well-trained as your older brothers—and you're much taller than your younger brother, so you'll provide a greater quantity of components." Scolon readied his wand like a conductor's baton. "Now, dear boy, say farewell to your dear, frozen mother—"
Shattering ice flew in all directions. "Smallify!" Tiffany shouted. Red light shot from her wand.
Scolon turned in surprise. The light engulfed him, and he shrank to the size of a thumb.
As Scolon started a reversal incantation, Drake pulled out his physics book. It was so heavy in his weakened fingers that it dropped onto Scolon of its own accord. Not that Drake hadn't intended to squash the smug bastard. After second period, Drake now knew the book had fallen because a sorcerer named Newton invented a spell called gravity . . . or something like that.
Tiffany brushed dripping water and ice chips from her arms, then set her toe on the book and ground down with her full weight. "That's for breaking my hair, barf bag!"
Drake pulled himself into a chair, the effort leaving him gasping.
Tiffany gave her son a rare hug. "Hey, you were, like, awesome."
"Thanks—I think."
"Since we're on Earth, you want to, like, go hang at the mall or catch a flick?" Tiffany asked.
Drake wasn't sure what either option entailed, but he'd had enough excitement for one day. "I think I'd just like to get back to the academy."
Tiffany grinned and mussed Drake's hair. "Dork."