The Evil Wizard Smallbone by Delia Sherman Page A

cats on them was the type to dye her hair. She was short and solid, and her eyes were Smallbone Cove black. Right now, white was showing all around her irises. Clearly, she wasn’t as calm as she had sounded.
    Smallbone fixed Dinah with his spectacles. “I want to hear how you found that coyote pelt, girl, and you better not leave nothing out.”
    Dinah took a slightly shaky breath and told Smallbone how she’d walked out on the icy Stream and found a coyote pelt that had turned her into a coyote when she put it on.
    Nick listened open-mouthed, glad he wasn’t the only person outside a fairy tale ever to get turned into something he wasn’t.
    “And what did the Stream do?” asked Smallbone when she stopped talking.
    “The Stream? Nothing. It was all ice, like I said.”
    “All the way down?”
    “I don’t know. Like I said, I was testing it.”
    “Hmph,” Smallbone said. “And what happened after you got turned?”
    Dinah looked at her feet. “I can’t say.”
    “What do you mean, you can’t say?”
    “I can’t, that’s all. I remember, kind of, but it’s like a dream, all feelings and smells. It’s hard to talk about.” She lifted her dark eyes. “I’m sorry. I wish I could.”
    Nick wished she could, too.
    “Well,” Smallbone said, “no use in beating a dead horse. What a jeezly mess.” He glanced at the clock over the counter. “I think I got time for a Moxie. Bring one for Foxkin, too.”
    With the expression of someone who is hoping she’s doing the right thing, Dinah took two brown glass bottles out of the cooler and brought them to Smallbone. He opened them and handed one to Nick. “Drink up.”
    Nick took a cautious sip. An intensely bitter wash reminiscent of tar and pine needles flooded his mouth and nose. His tongue felt like it had been scoured with Brillo.
    Smallbone laughed like water going down a drain. “If you could just see your face!”
    “The bitter taste comes from gentian root,” Dinah chimed in helpfully. “It’s supposed to be good for the digestion, but it hasn’t been scientifically proved.”
    Smallbone took a long swallow and smacked his lips. “
Children
don’t like it. I guess that tells us where you stand, eh, Foxkin?”
    Nick wiped his face on his sleeve, put the bottle to his lips, and chugged. The bubbles went up his nose and the bitterness caught at his throat, but he persisted. When the bottle was empty, he burped loudly. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we do.”
    Dinah giggled. Nick shot her a glare in case she was laughing at him. She wasn’t; she was smiling. His ears grew hot.
    “I see folks heading for the church,” Smallbone said. “Foxkin, if you’re done showing off, it’s time to go.”
    When Nick was little, his mother used to take him with her every Sunday to St. Mary Magdalene. The last time he’d gone was more than three years ago, for the funeral, but he remembered shadowy aisles and high-backed pews, an altar with a gold cross, windows like kaleidoscopes, and the nose-tingling perfume of incense and hot candle wax.
    The Smallbone Cove church was not like that. It was a big open box. The walls were painted the cloudy green of sea glass, and the windows were made up of dozens of small panes, also faintly green, with a rippled texture that gave a wavy undersea look to the sunlight pouring through them. A dozen rows of backless benches faced a wooden stage that was set up with a piano, a beat-up lectern, and two chairs. There were no crosses anywhere, even on the steeple.
    Smallbone stalked to the stage, climbed the steps, and lowered himself into the bigger chair. It was dark and heavy, with carving on the arms and back, like the rector’s chair at St. Mary’s. Only the arms of the rector’s chair didn’t look like reclining seals, and the legs and back weren’t held up by carved seals balanced on their back flippers.
    “Pass me that satchel, Foxkin,” Smallbone snapped. “And see if you can manage to sit still.”
    The