Merlin pretended not to be pleased, but Eric could tell he was at least a little proud.

Right before dawn, Eric opened another portal. He closed his eyes, reached out, and felt the knob in his hand. He turned it and stepped through. When he opened his eyes, he was in his room again.

Everything was back to normal. He’d done his job.

“That was a neat trick with the mask,” someone said.

He turned and saw Carrie Keene yawning, sitting on his bed. He jumped and let out a strangled little yelp. He hoped he hadn’t woken his mom.

Carrie looked like she was trying not to laugh. “You fight demons every night but you’re scared to find a girl in your room?”

Eric’s mouth was open. He and Carrie had known each other since grade school, but they weren’t friends. They’d barely passed two words outside of class or in the hallways. He wasn’t prepared to see her in his room. So he didn’t have the cleverest response.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

She ignored the question. “I never would have believed Brandon was a real werewolf if I hadn’t seen it myself. How did you change him back?”

“But you said — I heard you — ”

“Duh. I’m not going to tell my dad that werewolves are real. He’d think I was crazy.”

Eric tried to regain control of the conversation. And hopefully, his life, which seemed to have changed irrevocably in the last minute or so. “Wait. How did you get in my room?”

She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Eric. You know nobody in Middleton locks their doors.”

“Maybe I should start. Answer me: What are you doing here?”

She stopped smiling and took a piece of paper out of her pocket. On it was that same circle-slash symbol that had been burned into Brandon’s scalp.

“Well, Eric,” Carrie said, “it turns out I need a magician.”

19

Alanis Morissette Irony or the Other Kind

Carrie still hasn’t cried.

Not when she had to leave the house for a few hours to identify the body earlier today. There were other people who could do it, but she wanted to see him for herself. She did, and she didn’t cry. The coroner agreed to release the body before the end of the week. (It’s not like there’s a lot of dispute about the cause of death. There was an exit wound the size of a softball in the back of his skull.) While she was out, Carrie had a woman from a home health agency look after her mom.