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Farewell forever.
The words echoed throughout Luz’s skull over and over again. She couldn’t get them out of her mind. When Amity had kissed her on the cheek, Luz had been amazed. She’d really thought the impossible was happening: this super gorgeous warrior witch she had a hopeless crush on actually liked her back! She could remember gasping in awe and wonderment.
And then everything went wrong.
Amity’s face went red with embarrassment. Her expression was one of pure disgust and loathing. And then she’d uttered those words, the words that were like a knife to Luz’s heart: farewell forever. Amity had been trying to do something nice for her, a totally platonic gesture of friendship, and Luz had made it all weird. Amity had run into the house, muttering to herself, and Luz hadn’t been able to get a single word out of her since.
Amity probably hated her now. She probably thought Luz was a disgusting lesbo pervert like all her other crushes back home had. Luz still remembered how humiliating it was when her attempt to ask out the head cheerleader had ended up with her spitting in Luz’s face. Amity probably didn’t even like girls. And even if she did, why would she even like Luz? What did Luz have to offer her?
At first, Luz had hoped it would all blow over, that they could pretend that horrendously embarrassing incident never happened. But Amity avoided her like the plague over the next few days. Willow clearly knew what was going on, but Luz didn’t press her for details; she didn’t want to force Willow to choose between her friends if she didn’t have to. And then Amity didn’t even show up for the palisman adoption ceremony! She’d denied herself one of the most important rites of passage for a witch solely because she was so disgusted by Luz.
If Luz could have returned home, she would have at that point, just so Amity wouldn’t have to see her face anymore, but of course she was stuck in the Isles. Actually, Luz was stuck in general. Too human for the Demon Realm, too weird for the Human Realm. She’d driven away yet another friend. Amity hated her. She didn’t want to be her friend anymore. She didn’t even want to look at Luz.
Luz was so lost in her own self-pitying thoughts that she barely noticed someone walking up behind her as she walked home…er, to the Owl House…from Hexside. And when that someone cast a sleep spell on her, she was caught so by surprise that she lost consciousness nearly instantaneously.
When she opened her eyes again, Luz was lying on the floor in what looked like some sort of dungeon. Panic rose through her. Was she in the Conformatorium? Was she going to be tortured? Was Eda all right? The last thing she needed right now was to deal with Belos again, especially since she’d gotten really lucky last time and wasn’t likely to get lucky a second time.
Her flurry of thoughts was interrupted by a thick cloud of green smoke appearing in front of her and a horrifically ugly looking demon that looked like a minotaur if it’d been run over by a bus. And a truck. And then maybe an entire football team. “Luz Noceda, the human,” he snarled. “I am…The Viper.”
“Look, Mr. Viper.”
“That’s The Viper. With a capital the. I’ll be able to tell if you use the lowercase. Don’t ask me how; it’s a trade secret.”
Luz rolled her eyes. Villains and their stupid melodrama. Melodrama was Luz’s specialty. The Viper was infringing on her schtick! “The Viper, if it’s money you want, Eda’s got plenty of it…”
The Viper let out a diabolical cackle. “Oh, no, my dear girl. You see, I am a scientist. There’s so much we don’t know about humans. So much that the Emperor’s Coven is going to be happy to pay to learn.” He smiled and Luz recoiled. No one creature should have so many teeth. “I’ll leave you to your devices for the moment. I’m hungry and fortunately for you, I’m not in the mood for human flesh…yet.” He let out another cackle and then frowned, clearly expecting something to have happened. He cleared his throat meaningfully and then another cloud of green smoke appeared and the Viper – like hell would Luz use the uppercase inside her head – vanished as mysteriously as he arrived.
Luz forced herself to take deep breaths. In all honesty, she was a little relieved to be in the situation she was in now. Emotions and social situations, she was always crappy with. Escaping from danger and making bad guys regret the day they ever messed with the daughter of the most effective chancla warrior in existence? Yeah, that was more up Luz’s alley.
She looked around her cell for ways she could possibly escape when she saw something incredible, something she could have sworn wasn’t there before. She wasn’t alone in the cell. There was a redhaired boy of about her age, but not just any boy. It was a human boy. And he looked like he’d seen better days too. There were cuts and bruises all over him. Luz was on the verge of shaking him awake when he opened his eyes and gazed at her with an unfocused expression.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Luz Noceda, the only human ever to become a witch or to land a blow on the emperor himself,” Luz bragged. “And your ticket out of this place. The Anaconda or whatever his name is bit off way more than he chew when he took me.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” the boy said. “One moment, I was walking home from school, the next I woke up here. Oh, I’m John. John O’Malley.”
Luz held out her hand for John to shake and he flinched. Oh. Yeah. Probably best to refrain from any sort of physical contact until he’d had a chance to get over being tortured or whatever had happened to him. “Where are you from, John? Gravesfield?”
“Uh…” John said, looking frantic and alarmed. “I…I don’t remember! Oh, shit, I can’t remember where I lived…it’s all a blur! God, that bastard wiped my memories. He kidnapped you too, right?”
Luz nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, but he attacked me from behind like a coward. Face to face, I’d kick this guy’s ass. Anyway, to make a long story short, you’re in the Demon Realm.”
John’s breathing went more frantic. “I’m dead?!”
“No, no, no,” Luz said, waving her hands hurriedly. “You’re just in an alternate dimension, that’s all! It’s not hell…I mean, sometimes it resembles it, but…” Did I die? Luz remembered herself saying. Am I in the bad place? (Were they right? Was I a sinner all along? Am I just as unnatural as they thought…?)
She cleared her throat. “This whacko’s gonna be the dead one, that’s my point. I’m sure you’re a real badass like me!”
John looked ashamed. “I…not really. I mean, I took some martial arts, but…I’ve never thrown a punch in my life. I’m really more on the receiving end…the other kids in school make fun of me. They call me a weirdo and a geek…”
“A nerd,” Luz finished. “A good for nothing freak who should have been smothered at birth instead of polluting this world with her unnatural lusts.”
“Uh…not that last one…” Luz flushed scarlet. Had she truly said that out loud? She must have been more stressed than she thought she was. “Yeah, they don’t like me just cause, you know, I don’t like…uh, rugby.” Ooh, rugby. Maybe John wasn’t from the US at all. His name sounded kind of Irish. Didn’t they play rugby in Ireland? “I prefer to read stuff like the Good Witch Azura.”
Luz could feel her eyes lighting up in excitement, and then they immediately dimmed. This all sounded too good to be true. A cute human boy with a sexy foreign accent who was being nice to her and liked Azura? This had an Adegast-esque trap written all over it. “If you’re such a big Good Witch Azura fan, then tell me your opinion of Azura’s chemistry with Gamaliel.”
John blinked. “Is that a trick question? There is no Gamaliel in the Good Witch Azura series.” Well, he got one right, but that could have just been him guessing. “Azura’s usually shipped with Malingale, but I personally think she has more chemistry with Hecate. They’ve got that rivals to friends to lovers stuff going on, know what I mean?”
Okay. This was checking out. The only person Luz knew of in the Demon Realm who liked Azura was Amity. True, there were probably ways the Viper could have gotten that information from her head somehow, but now she was just sounding paranoid for the sake of it. Subtlety, she’d found, was not exactly something bad guys had in spades in the Demon Realm. Even Adegast’s illusions would have fallen apart if Luz had used her brain for five seconds.
“A guy of taste,” Luz said approvingly. “I like that. Well, I know this is scary, but this is sort of what I do now. We’ll get you out of here.”
John gave her a slight smile. Was that a blush she saw on his cheeks? Nah, Luz was reading too much into things again. “I bet you can just blast us out of here.”
Luz gave a sheepish laugh and shook her head. Her glyphs had been taken from her. Clearly, the Viper was not a complete imbecile. The way she saw it, she had two options available to her. She could bide her time and wait for Eda to rescue her. Though that, of course, would put Eda at risk, especially now that she didn’t have magic. The other option was wait for the Viper to return and trick him somehow. That didn’t seem too hard. He didn’t strike Luz as the sharpest knife in the drawer.
John pressed against the door to their cell and soon discovered option three: figuring out that the door was, in fact, unlocked. Of course Luz knew that they weren’t that lucky – no one was. This was obviously part of the Viper’s twisted plot. He was probably going to test their capabilities against various monsters, see how much humans could withstand. Unfortunately for Luz and John, the answer was really not all that much. Not without her glyphs, at any rate.
Still, there didn’t seem to be a better option available to her. Luz was determined to save the day. She was a hero. And the fact that a cute guy was relying on her to save her was something of an ego boost, it had to be said. Though he wasn’t nearly as cute as Amity, in Luz’s humble opinion.
At any rate, there was another benefit to going through the Viper’s gauntlet. If the Viper had taken John from Earth, then he had a portal, and if Luz managed to work her way to his center of operations, she could use it for herself! Even if it took her to Ireland, she could still call her mom from there so she wouldn’t worry anymore. The thought of Mami back home having no clue where Luz was – learning that Luz had lied to her the whole time or maybe even thinking she’d been kidnapped – it just made her sick to her stomach.
“Yeah, this is definitely a trap,” John said with a nod. “Still…what other choice do we have?”
Luz was definitely right about having to face a gauntlet. She faced down a wide variety of monsters, most of them with very fiery or corrosive breath. She mostly handled them by not getting anywhere close to them. If she had her glyphs, she’d pulverize them. (Or, more realistically, distract them while she made her escape.) But without them, she was stuck mostly running and doing some really awesome parkour moves if she said so herself.
John certainly looked impressed. Actually, it was more than that. He looked in awe, quite similar to how Luz herself looked when Amity faced down her mother’s abominations. The moment that Luz had realized she had a crush on Amity. (Or, perhaps more accurately, the moment she’d stopped denying she had one on her.)
“If this is what you can do without your magic,” John said with an impressed whistle as Luz barely dodged a spray of darts that erupted without warning from the walls, “then I wouldn’t like to be on your bad side when you’ve got them. I’ve never met anyone as cool as you, Luz.”
Luz couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “Then you haven’t been around a lot of people, John, cause I’m, like, the uncoolest person ever!” John looked shocked to hear her say this. Luz sighed. “People laughed at me all the time back home.”
John blinked repeatedly. “That…doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got so much confidence and spirit…you’re really hot too.” He put a hand to his face, looking mortified. “Oh, God, did I just say that out loud?”
Once again, Luz was struck with a sense that things were way too good to be true. Was this some illusion that an enemy was using against her? She poked John experimentally, but he was quite solid. Well, that put an end to that idea. “Maybe things are better in Ireland, John, but where I come from, people like me, people who like guys and girls, people who read the Good Witch Azura, people who don’t fit in get punished for it. We get bullied. Hurt. Rejected! Pranked! Over and over again!”
John took a step backwards. Luz couldn’t really blame him; she was pretty much screaming at the top of her lungs by the end of her monologue. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have gotten worked up…it’s not like you’ve done anything wrong.”
“It sounds to me like you’ve got a lot of anger built up,” John observed.
“Yeah, well…you would too in my shoes,” Luz said. “My mom sent me to a camp she thought would make me normal. I wound up here instead. It was just for the summer, but now I’m stuck here, and she’s gonna think I ran away cause I hated her! She’s gonna hate me! Or worse, herself!”
John put a hand on Luz’s shoulder and gazed into her eyes. He had really pretty green eyes. The shade looked so very familiar. “I still don’t see how anyone could hate you, Luz. I’ve just spent the better part of an hour in your company and I…uh, well, I like you a lot.”
John was getting closer and closer and his lips were heading towards Luz as if there was a magnet between them. And then Luz pushed him away. “I’m so sorry!” John shouted, sounding extremely embarrassed. “I really shouldn’t have…I should have asked first…”
“It’s okay, John,” Luz said softly. “I’m really flattered. I mean that. No one’s ever liked me like that before.” John just looked gobsmacked by hearing that. “But I like someone else.” She gave a fond grin. “Her name is Amity and she’s just the most incredible person who ever lived.”
John returned the grin. “Oh, yeah? Tell me more.”
“She’s so sweet and pretty and nice and thoughtful and pretty and a totally kickass fighter and pretty!” Luz gushed. “I could look into those beautiful golden eyes for the rest of eternity. She’s always got time for her friends, and she’s so brave, standing up to her mom for me! I like her so much.” She sighed. “But she doesn’t like me.”
John looked like this wasn’t computing for him. “You’re…absolutely certain about that?”
“Oh, yeah,” Luz said, making clear there was no room for doubt. “She said it straight to my face she didn’t wanna be my friend anymore.”
“That doesn’t sound like her,” John said, his brow furrowing. “I mean, from what you said about her.”
Luz shrugged. “Can’t say I blame her. She’s the most popular girl in school. She could do so much better than me. Anyway, after she kissed me and I was dumb enough to think she meant it romantically, she looked so horrified. And then she bid me farewell forever. Those were her exact words, John. Farewell forever. I know I’m not the best at reading social cues, but when someone says they never wanna see me again, I kind of think they never wanna see me again.”
John looked horrified, as if Luz had said something completely and utterly unthinkable. “Luz, I think you’ve completely misread the situation. It sounds to me like she was embarrassed not at you, but at herself! Like, probably she’s scared to reach out, and then she cockatriced out at the last second before she could explain herself.”
John was so sweet, in Luz’s opinion, just as sweet as he was wrong, and that made him very sweet indeed. Maybe she was being stupid. Why should she waste her time pining over Amity, who hated her, when a hot boy who liked Azura was right in front of her wanting to date her?
“So if the girl of your dreams is out of the picture, wanna go out when we get back to the Human Realm?”
“I…I’m so sorry, John. But I can’t. Amity needs me. She put herself at a lot of risk standing up to her mom. If…if there’s even a slight chance this theory of yours is right, then I can’t betray her like this.” She gave a shaky smile. “Besides, we’re not even out of here yet! Cart before the horse, am I right?”
John looked vaguely confused, but nodded enthusiastically. The two of them continued making their way through the gauntlet. The layout of the dungeon they were imprisoned in was confusing. It didn’t seem particularly Euclidean, in Luz’s opinion, and she had no clue just how close she was to the exit until a cloud of green smoke once more appeared and the Viper stood in front of them.
“Well, well, Luz Noceda,” the Viper hissed. “It seems you are smarter than I give you credit for. You have defeated the tasks in front of you. But it will do you no good.”
“I’m gonna kick your ass, Viper!”
“IT’S THE VIPER!” the Viper screeched at her. He made a spell circle and Luz let out a gasp as Amity appeared out of thin air and he grabbed her by the throat. “You may be walking out of here, but your precious Amity won’t.”
“Run, Luz!” Amity urged her. “Save yourself!”
But Luz couldn’t do that. It wasn’t how she was built. Amity had gone through so much because of her. It was time Luz repaid the favor. “Please don’t kill her. There must be something you want.”
The Viper cackled malevolently. “I might be persuaded to let her go. if you swear an Everlasting Oath to serve as my guinea pig for as long as you live and not make any escape attempts…not that you’ll be living all that long.”
Luz didn’t hesitate for a second and held out her hand. “I so swear it.”
Instead of moving to seal the oath, the Viper cast a spell circle, blue light filled the room, and then suddenly Luz found herself not in the dungeons of a mad scientist’s lair, but in the basement of Blight Manor. Well, technically speaking, it might indeed have qualified as that, but the point was that her surroundings had completely changed. The whole thing had been nothing more than an illusion. All of the things she’d faced in that dungeon were just an illusion.
And so were the Viper and John. The illusions on them faded, leaving behind Emira and Edric respectively. Luz took a few steps backwards, willing herself as hard as possible not to cry. “What kind of a twisted joke is this?”
“It’s not a joke, Luz,” Emira said gently. “It’s a test! We had to make sure you were worthy of dating our little sister. So we tempted you with the guy of your dreams and made you choose between saving Amity or yourself. And you made the right choices!”
Luz could barely process this. “So…so you’re still saying that Amity wants to date me?”
“I’m probably gonna get killed for this, but, heck, in for a neonate in for a snail,” Edric said. “You were the one she wanted to ask to Grom.”
Luz opened and closed her mouth, repeatedly. “I…me?! But I’m just…”
“‘The coolest girl I know,’” Emira quoted. She returned the illusion of Amity. “Oh, Emira,” it said, “this is so dumb. Luz is so awesome and beautiful and cool, and she probably sees me as no better than a bully. And I nearly got her dissected! Why would she be my date?”
She dispelled the illusion. Edric looked at Luz with fondness. “Luz, I’m sorry about tricking you. But I meant what I said. You’re one of the coolest people I know. I mean, come on, you led a jailbreak from the Conformatorium on day one! You saved Eda from petrification!”
“And you gave us back our sister,” Emira said earnestly. “You stopped her from becoming Mom 2.0. There’s no way we can repay you for that. I wish I had the people who made you think you weren’t the coolest girl ever here in front of me, because I’d pulverize them!”
“And I’m sorry about leading you on,” Edric admitted. “But I kind of meant that too a little. You know what? If my little sister hadn’t called dibs, I’d probably have asked you out.”
Luz could feel her cheeks heating up and warmth filling her heart too. She wasn’t sure whether or not Emira and Edric truly meant everything they said or if they were just trying to make her feel better, but either way, they had definitely accomplished the latter objective. “Aw, you guys are all right.” She put her hand on her chin reflectively. “Now I really should be pissed you kidnapped me and deceived me, but you were doing it for Amity, so…I tell you what. I’ll give you a thirty minute head start before I tell Amity about this.”
“You wouldn’t,” Emira said, paling. She gasped. “You would!”
“RUN FOR IT, EM!” Edric shouted as the two of them hightailed it out of the basement. “And ask Mittens out, Luz!”
Luz watched the troublemaking twins leave at a faster pace than she thought it was possible for witches to move. “You know what? That’s not a half bad idea.” And who knows? Maybe, just maybe, Amity would say yes.