That weekend, Zoe went door-to-door selling bows, T-shirts, and ribbons to her neighbors. She generated a surprisingly high amount of sales, raking in orders for a dozen T-shirts and about thirty bows. Gareth Dodgson, who lived three houses down from Zoe, bought a whole bunch of bows because he thought they might be good to decorate his Christmas tree with. Since it was still September, it seemed like Gareth was getting a little far ahead of himself, but Zoe didn't care. As long as she could contribute to the breast cancer awareness club's fundraiser, that was all she needed.

As P. E. was wrapping up on Tuesday, Zoe went up to Skylar as she was leaving the locker room. "I've got some more order forms," Zoe said to Skylar.

"Oh, you do?" Skylar took the order forms from Zoe and gasped when she saw the numbers. "Holy shit," she said. "How did you sell so many bows?"

Zoe shrugged. "I just talked to the right people, I guess," she said.

"Or you're lucky," Skylar said with a smile. Between Zoe's performance with the fundraiser, and the incident with Michael at Skylar's birthday party, it seemed Skylar was really warming up to Zoe. Any other girl would've been thrilled to be on good terms with a popular girl like Skylar. Zoe, on the other hand...well, she appreciated Skylar being nice to her, but she kept having to remind herself the real reason why she was trying to win her over. Skylar was a witch, and Zoe would need to get closer to her to find incriminating evidence.

***

A couple nights later, Zoe and her mother were starting to dig in to their chicken noodle soup when Zoe's father came home. "Hi guys," Zoe's dad said.

"Hi Dad!" said Zoe.

"I just swung by the post office," her dad said, "And it looks like we've got a lot of mail." He dumped a pile of letters and packages onto the kitchen table.

"Oh, good!" Zoe's mom said when she saw one of the packages. "That must be the set of headphones I ordered!"

Zoe swept a stack of letters off of another package and did a double take when she saw the package's label. "Wait," she said. "Is that Skylar Gregson?"

"What?"

"Look," said Zoe. "This package is addressed to Skylar Gregson."

"Oh my gosh," her mom gasped. "That's the girl you and Miles are trying to stalk and find out if she's really a witch!"

"It must have been put in our post office box by mistake," Zoe's dad said.

Zoe looked at the return address and gasped herself. "It's from Witches' Workshop!" she said.

"Witches' Workshop?"

Zoe shook the package, but all she heard was a bunch of thudding. Not much to go off of for what might be inside. "It must be something Skylar needed for her witchcraft."

"You should take that to Mr. Al," Zoe's dad said. "That could be the evidence you need to incriminate Skylar."

"Yeah, probably," said Zoe. She got up and took the package up to her bedroom. She got out her phone and called Miles' number.

After a minute, Miles answered the phone. "Hey Zoe," he said. "I can't believe I still have you as Zack in my contacts."

"Yeah, that is weird," Zoe laughed. "But Miles, there's something I need to tell you."

"What?"

"My dad just got home from our post office box, and a package for Skylar got delivered to us by mistake."

"You're joking!"

"No, I'm not! And you'll never believe who the package was from. It came from a place called The Witches' Workshop."

"The Witches' Workshop?"

"Yeah."

Miles started to stutter with excitement. "Mr. Al's gonna be happier than a kid on Christmas morning!" he said. "If we give him that package-"

"Wait a minute," said Zoe. "If Skylar doesn't get her package, then she might get suspicious that someone's on to her."

"So? We should tell Mr. Al about this!"

"Yes, we should, but..."

"What?"

"Would he really believe it?"

"What are you talking about? Of course he'd believe it!"

"Just like how he believed us about Skylar cursing the locker room at school?"

"He did believe us, remember?"

"But he said that wasn't good enough evidence."

"Well, if this package isn't good enough evidence, I don't know what is," said Miles.

Zoe bit her lip. "How about you go tell Mr. Al?" she said. "I'll go take the package to Skylar's house."

"What?"

"It's the only way. If we do that, then we'll have proof, but Skylar won't get suspicious at all."

Miles sighed. "Alright," he said. "I hope you're right about this."

***

"You got my package?" Skylar asked.

"Yes," Zoe answered. She was standing on Skylar's doorstep with the package that had accidentally been sent to her house. "It was sent to my house by mistake."

"Oh, thank you, Zoe," Skylar said, taking the package and hugging Zoe. "You're the best."

"Thank you," Zoe said. She thought about asking Skylar what the Witches' Workshop was, but that would've been suicide. "I just wanted to do the right thing."

"Thank you so much," said Skylar. "I'll see you at school tomorrow!"

"You too."

After Skylar went back inside and closed her front door, Zoe turned and left. Before she was even out of Skylar's driveway, she heard her phone buzzing. She looked at it and saw that it was Miles. Zoe answered her phone, but before she could say anything, Miles started talking. "Where are you? Is it too late?"

"Uh...I just gave the package back to Skylar..."

"Dammit!" Miles cursed. "Mr. Al said he needed us to give him the package! Without actual, physical proof, he can't mount a warrant on Skylar!"

"Ugh," Zoe grumbled. "Well, I can't go and ask for the package back..."

"I know! This might've been our only chance, and we blew it!"

"We're gonna have to find some other evidence." Zoe looked back at Skylar's house and had another idea fall upon her. "If we could sneak into Skylar's house and start poking around..."

"Oh no," said Miles. "That's an even worse idea!"

"I know, but we don't have a choice," said Zoe. "We'll have to go tomorrow after school, while Skylar's at the breast cancer awareness club meeting and her parents are at work."

Miles sighed. "I guess so," he said. "The sooner we can prove Skylar's a witch, the better."

***

The next day was Friday. The whole day, Zoe felt anxiety building up inside her. The heist she and Miles were planning was a huge risk. They would need a lot of luck to get into Skylar's house, find the evidence they needed, and get out before Skylar and her parents got home. But if they got what they needed, it would be worth it.

As Skylar was heading to P. E, she noticed Avery and had another idea pop into her mind. "Hey Avery," said Zoe.

"Yeah?"

Zoe looked around to make sure nobody was listening, then said "Me and Miles are gonna break into Skylar's house today after school."

"You're what?"

"It's the only way we'll get evidence against her," said Zoe. "Look, you're going to the breast cancer awareness club meeting today, right?"

"Right."

"Could you cover for me and Miles? Just tell Alan and Skylar we couldn't make it today. Tell them we've got a lot of homework, or my parents are taking us out somewhere-I don't care what you say. Just come up with a good excuse."

Avery nodded reluctantly. "Okay," she said. "And I'll try to stall Skylar after the meeting, too. Just in case."

"Great. Thank you so much."

***

The moment the final bell rang, Zoe ran off to meet Miles at their rendezvous point (which was at the school's front gate). She arrived to find Miles waiting there for her. "You ready?" Miles asked.

"Gonna have to be," Zoe answered.

"Then let's go."

Zoe and Miles left and started heading for Skylar's house. After about ten minutes of jogging, they reached the Gregson family residence. "Okay," Zoe panted. "We're here now."

"You have those ski masks?"

"Of course." Zoe reached into her backpack and pulled out two ski masks she'd brought from home. Her parents had gotten them when they'd gone to the Sierra Mountains for their second honeymoon last December. Once she and Miles had put the ski masks back on, they looked at Skylar's house. "So how are we gonna get it?"

"What-you don't know?"

"Well..."

"Oh, come on, Zoe," Miles grumbled. "You've gotta have some kind of plan! Breaking into Skylar's house was your idea in the first place!"

"There's gotta be a way." Zoe went up to the front door and tried opening it. To neither her nor Miles' surprise, it was locked.

"So the front door's locked," said Miles.

"There must be a key somewhere," said Zoe. She looked down and said "Maybe under the doormat-"

"Under the mat?" Miles scoffed. "Nobody does that anymore."

His statement was proved wrong when Zoe lifted the doormat and found a shiny silver key lying there. "Nobody except the Gregsons, apparently."

"Wow," said Miles. "So we've got the key. Now what?"

"You should probably keep watch," said Zoe. "Skylar might have some kind of gender-changing curse placed on her bedroom, so it might be safer if you stayed out here."

"What about you?"

"Well, I've already been affected by a curse like that," said Zoe. "So it probably wouldn't affect me."

"I hope you're right," said Miles. "What do you want me to do if someone comes?"

"Knock on a window or something," Zoe answered. She inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. When she entered the house, she saw that it looked just like it had for Skylar's birthday party-except without the balloons or streamers. Even though she knew nobody was home, Zoe still felt compelled to be as quiet as possible. She closed and locked the front door behind her and tiptoed through the house.

Zoe crept down the hall until she found Skylar's bedroom. She opened the door, half expecting to see racks of spellbooks and potion-making ingredients. But Skylar's room looked like one that belong to any other girl her age. There was a neatly made bed, a white bookcase, a pink dresser, and a closet full of shirts, dresses, blouses, and boxes stacked up on the floor.

Boxes...that might be a good place to start.

Zoe went up to the closet and opened up the topmost box. In it, she found a bunch of printed-out pictures. It took a second to realize that these were some of Skylar's old mementoes. There were pictures of six-year-old Skylar learning to ride a bike, and swimming at the local swimming pool with her adoptive parents, and blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Under the family pictures were some of Skylar's old book reports from elementary school. Zoe looked through the rest of the boxes, but nothing looked witch-y at all. The boxes held shoes, boots, and old dolls that Skylar probably hadn't played with since her age was in the single digits.

"Okay," Zoe muttered when she'd closed the last box and put it back in the closet. "Nothing in there." She looked around the room, but the only thing she saw was Skylar's dresser. Zoe went up and opened the bottom drawer to find piles of panties, bras, and socks. She rifled through the clothing, hoping to find something suspicious, but she found nothing.

Zoe was just closing Skylar's underwear drawer when she heard a knocking on the bedroom window. She looked up and saw Miles standing there, waving crazily to get her attention. He raised his ski mask slightly and mouthed "Hide!"

Zoe froze with fear. Someone was home? Already? Had they already been at Skylar's house for that long? But she didn't get much chance to ponder it. Because right at that moment, she heard a key turning in the front door's lock.

Skylar had come home.

To be continued...