“We don’t have a scanner,” said Maya, her hands moving swiftly over the keyboard, “so I’m not sure how to search for it, exactly. I can pull up some symbol dictionaries, but it will take time to go through them.”
“Maybe... check out demon sigils?”
I still couldn’t understand why the grandmas would be making a sigil, but at this point I was willing to try anything.
Maya was scrolling through a bunch of them, shaking her head and glancing back and forth from the drawing on the napkin to the images popping up on the computer screen.
“You know what it reminds me of?” asked Conrad. “Remember a while back, the Da Pinchi Code?”
“You mean Da Vinci Code?” asked Maya’s cousin Richard.
“Nah, dude. DaPinchi. It was, like, this burglar code. Burglars would put these signs on buildings they cased.”
“That sounds a little far-fetched, Conrad,” said Duke.
“Dude, it was totally, like, on the BBC. You know how those Brits are—they’re real serious.”
“He’s right,” said Maya, pulling up an article online. “I remember hearing about it, too. And here it is. It was on the BBC a couple years back....”
Bronwyn, Duke, and I crowded around to look at the screen over Maya’s shoulders.
“But... no, Snopes doesn’t think it makes sense.”
“Who’s Snopes?” I asked.
“It’s a Web site that investigates rumors, tells you whether or not they check out.”
“There’s a Web site that does that?”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century, my friend.”
“And this one doesn’t check out?”
“They don’t say it’s a fabrication, exactly, just that it doesn’t make sense, since there wouldn’t be much ‘added value’ in doing it. It says that criminals have other ways of sharing addresses beyond physical marks.”
Not to mention... why in the world would a bus full of witches be making the sign of theft? It made no sense.
“Still,” I said, “this symbol does look a bit like that one, doesn’t it? Maya, would you mind poking around a little more, see if you can find any others like it? The image might not be complete, after all.”
“Sure, I’ll do what I can,” said Maya. “And Kareem is great at this sort of thing.”
“I was just going to suggest taking a photo of the symbol,” Kareem said. “That way we can import it and Google it directly.”
“Good idea,” said Maya. The cousins bent their heads together and worked up a plan.
Oscar huffed loudly, then snorted, then “coughed”—which sounded a lot like a snicker.
“I’m going to take Oscar upstairs,” I said. “See if I can figure out what’s going on with him. Come on, Oscar. Let’s go.”
He didn’t respond, just continued to loll on his bed, so I finally leaned over and scooped him up, then carried him to the stairs. “Luggedhim” is more apt. Oscar might be a miniature pig, but he was still a pig, and hewas heavy. I nearly dropped him halfway up. Finally, we reached the top of the steps and he transformed—while still in my arms, which was a decidedly odd sensation—into his natural form.
There was no doubt about it now: Oscar was laughing. Cackling, more like.
“Oscar, what in the world has gotten into you?”
“Woooo,”he said. “The stairs are spinning. It’s like a carnival ride! Awesome!”
“Are youdrunk?” I gasped as I set him down on the landing, trying to catch my breath.
