Page 13 of Spark of Sorcery

“That’s my girl.” I grin.

Twenty minutes later we’re sitting in Clare’s room again, passing the open bottle of liquor between us and singing along to one of Clare’s records – I’m starting to remember the lyrics.

“Pleeeaaaase!” Fly begs as he swigs back the bottle. “It looks really terrible.”

“Jeez thanks,” I say, lifting my hand to my head. I’ve seen my reflection now. My face and body may be healed, but I have lost a clump of my hair and have gained a scorch mark to my scalp.

“I can fix it for you,” he says, bouncing up and down on his knees, “can hide that bit.” He motions to my bald patch.

“I don’t know,” I say, staring down into the bottle.

“I promise it won’t hurt.”

“It’s not that I’m worried about it hurting,” I begin.

“Great!” Fly says, clapping his hands together and bouncing right up onto his feet, taking me with him and pushing me down into Clare’s desk chair. He swings me around and starts to pluck pins from my head.

“Hey!” I moan. “That does hurt.”

“No pain, no gain,” he sings.

“But you said it wouldn’t hurt.”

“It won’t. You’re being a wimp.”

I glare up at him but he simply smiles and loosens my hair down over my shoulders.

“Wow,” Clare says, coming to stand beside Fly. “Your hair’s really pretty, Briony. Why don’t you wear it down like that more often.”

“I don’t like it,” I tell her.

“You don’t?” she says. “But it’s gorgeous.”

“It draws attention to me. Attention I don’t want.”

And it reminds me of her. She had the same hair and she always wore it down. It turned heads wherever we went. If she’d just stayed hidden, tried to shrink away in the shadows like I’ve always tried to do, maybe she’d still be with us.

“No offense, Cupcake,” Fly says, combing his fingersthrough my hair and attempting to untangle the knots, “you’ve already brought quite a lot of attention to yourself. I don’t think your hair will make a lot of difference. So why don’t you let me style it down?” I shake my head. “Can I at least do an interesting braid – one that will cover the,” he lowers his voice to a whisper, “unfortunate patch.”

“Sure,” I say. I do have some pride, and though I may not care so much about my hair, I’d rather avoid all the snide remarks and stupid jokes when people spot I now have parts of my hair missing.

Clare perches on her desk and I watch her eyes follow Fly as he skips around my head, tugging and twisting pieces of hair.

“How did you lose that clump anyway?” Clare asks after a while. “It looks like it was burned right off your head. I didn’t come across any fire.”

“I didn’t come across any tornados,” I point out.

“I thought it was going to shoot me right out into space. If Professor Tudor hadn’t sucked me off, I guess I’d be floating somewhere out by the moon right about now,” she mutters.

Fly snorts and we both peer at him. “Okay, okay, I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, but she did just say Professor Tudor sucked her off.” Clare blinks. “We talked about this, remember?”

“Ewww,” Clare says, although in the next second the disgust morphs into something more dream-like, “although …”

“Seriously?!” Fly says, almost dropping the pieces of hair in his hands. “The man scares me to death.”

“Well, that too, but he’s also very strong and very muscular and when he wrapped his arms around me–”

“He did what?!” I shriek, my voice sounding unnaturally high.