The Scapegracers

by Hannah Abigail Clarke

  “This mimic is mighty red. You’re precocious. It takes most witches years to accumulate that sort of supernatural might. Now, it might be raw talent, but something tells me that you didn’t act alone, and that’s why the magic was so potent. I’d wager you have something of an amateur coven forming. Seeing as the mimic only brought you here, you likely were the primary enchantress—you spoke the words, wielded the chalk—but I would imagine that it took more than just you to make that sort of magic. Never worry. We can save your friends as well. It’s of the utmost importance that we do. That comes later. First, we work with you.

  “You can’t talk right now. That’s an unfortunate side effect of the mimic, I’m afraid. When we touched its vessel, it activated itself, which tends to reproduce the physical stress of spell casting threefold. No release, just the stress. Freezes you up, as well. I’ve been told it’s a tad awkward. My apologies. We can deactivate the mimic when we’ve brought you somewhere safe, and then the detox can take place. It’s quick and completely painless and you’ll never ache again. Levi, Caleb, would you mind?”

  “I want to do it,” said David, baby eyes wide as his fists. “Let me.”

  “No,” said Caleb.

  “If you must,” said Abel.

  David was practically thrumming. He grinned and clambered up the pool wall, bypassing the ladder entirely. He vaulted up onto the pavement with his elbows and knees, tearing his slacks in the process, and sprang to his feet beside me. His grabbed my wrists, twisted them behind my back like a cop would. My body was limp as a ragdoll and screamed where we made contact. How dare he, how fucking dare he, the fucking animal, I howled in my head, but the mimic spell pressed on my chest and smothered any attempt I made toward speech. He was clumsy with me, jerked me like I was a losing show pig at a county fair, eventually arranging me so that I stood in front of him, my back to him, wrists pinned like he was about to slam me across the hood of a car and slap cuffs on me. He shoved me toward the gate.

  I couldn’t turn my head to see the other three behind us. I barely heard them. Their shoes all but whispered against the concrete and the grass, but their nearness prickled the hair on the back of my neck. I wanted to thrash, to writhe in David’s grip, but I couldn’t. My feet kept getting caught between his ankles. He limped under my weight.

  Someone else reached for me. David yelped and pulled me closer. “I’m doing it,” he insisted. “I’m old enough. I can do it.” He squeezed harder, hard enough to bruise.

  “You’re hurting her,” said Abel with mild displeasure, as if David was petting a cat the wrong way. He turned his attention to Levi and Caleb, then. “Let’s clean this up, will you?”

  Clean up what?

  “I’m not hurting her,” David insisted. He hauled me across the yard, past a toolshed, and through the gate of Jing’s chain-link fence, to the driveway where a gloomy Lexus waited to receive us. It was navy, recently polished, twice the price of a state school’s tuition. I tried to read the license plate, but David didn’t shove me at the right angle to see it.

  The other brothers trudged up behind us. By a neighbor’s watery porchlight, their shadows looked bizarre, distended in ways that didn’t make sense to me. One brother—Abel? They all looked the same from this angle—strode up beside the hood. He pulled the mass from his shoulders and slung it between the racks on the roof of the car so that its hooves dipped over the windshield and its nose slumped down toward the trunk. Caleb draped the second doe beside the first one, belly up, and Levi tucked the fawn between the does’ bodies. Abel popped the truck, rummaged until he produced a fistful of bungee cords. He tossed them to Caleb, who caught them one-handed. He went to work lashing the corpses in place.

  Abel sighed. He unlocked the car, knocked his hands down his shirt, and jogged to climb in the driver’s seat. “Three of you will have to squeeze in the back.” He shot me a glance between deer legs, flashed an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. One of us would have stayed behind if we knew we’d be taking a guest back with us. Levi, you’ve got shotgun.”

  “Why Levi? Levi always gets it! This is so freaking unfair. He had shotgun on the way here. It’s my turn.” David whined like he was a fucking baby. How old was he? His spittle hit the back of my neck while he complained. He stopped outside of the right-hand back-seat door without releasing me, which felt violating and irritatingly redundant, as I couldn’t fucking run regardless, and stomped a monkey brain from a nearby hedge apple tree into a million pulpy pieces.

  “Because Levi is hurting, so we’re letting him man the music as a consolation. Besides, if it wasn’t Levi, it’d be Caleb. Hush,” Abel replied, and the engine purred to life.

  The cords pulled too tightly over their fur. Skin bulged in patches. I couldn’t stop staring. I felt phantom ropes around my waist.

  I was pushed into the back seat, and Caleb and David filed in on either side of me. David’s hands stayed firmly on my wrists all the while. He only let go to buckle my seatbelt, which he did with too much zeal for something as mundane as buckling a seatbelt. He grinned like a damn idiot. The hoof tips jittered as we pulled out of the drive.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to beat the entire lot to death, I wanted to pull the deer off the hood and hold them against me, I wanted to be downstairs, asleep among my shiny new friends, blissfully unaware of the brothers Chantry.

  Furthermore, my phone was in the basement.

  No one would know where I went.

  SEVEN

  WE WHO ARE FIGHTING LOVE GOD

  I had no idea where the fuck we were. It was past the stretch of town that was populated with gas stations and pastel houses, and out into the liminal realm of never-ending cornfields with nary a street sign to be found. They’d turned off from a dubiously paved road onto a dirt one, and now all around the car were scraggly woods. The air outside looked thinner. The trees clawed out of the earth with ragged fingers and twisted elbows, looked like the arms of giants who’d previously occupied this space before the Chantry homestead fell from the sky and crushed them to death with its mass of brick and plaster columns. It was an antebellum monster with long windows and an endless porch. Abel slowed to a halt, and the horrible scratch of tire on gravel ground to silence. Levi killed the Radiohead he’d been playing.

  I doubted I’d ever be able to listen Radiohead again.

  “Let me disarm the mimic,” said David. He made grabby hands across my lap at Caleb. “I never get to do it. I want to do it. Abel, make Caleb let me.”

  “You could always ask your brother, you know,” said Abel.

  Caleb audibly scoffed.

  “Caleb, please?”

  Abel gave Caleb a look in the rearview mirror.

  “You’d fuck it up,” said Caleb.

  “I won’t. I’m not an idiot, you know. I know how to do this.” Caleb gave him the mimic, and he clutched it close to his chest and leered at his brother, which took bending forward to see him around my body. Then, with a start, to Abel: “How are we going to get her up the stairs?”

  “You could carry her bridal style,” said Abel with a smile, half joking, or maybe not.

  Not if you want your testicles to remain attached to your body, you fucking fuck.

  “I’ll do it,” said Caleb as he leaned his temple to the glass. “David would drop her. Stop bitching,” he said to David before he began. “You didn’t help carry the deer out of the pool, so you’re going to help pull them around back.”

  David huffed and crossed his arms.

  The brothers unbuckled, and all but Caleb filed out of the car. The sound of them unlashing the deer overhead flipped my stomach. They pulled them free, jeered at each other, cussed as they dragged them away from the car and around the back of the house. Caleb lingered with me, completely silent, stoic. The sound didn’t seem to bother him at all.

  When he reached for my buckle, he bent his wrists at odd angles to avoid touching me. His shirt cuffs didn’t brush my skin. Maybe it was a twisted form of sympath
y, or some sort of shrunken compassion. Not that much compassion, or he wouldn’t be an active participant in all of this. Maybe he was just disgusted by the thought of touching me.

  Not that disgusted, though. Not enough that he didn’t gather me up like a damn doll. One arm snaked behind my back, the other under my knees, and he lifted me up like he was moving a box of china—not tenderly, but with care not to chip the contents.

  He paused before he lifted me out of the car. The night air whorled in, and it was cold enough to make my knees shake and the hair on my arms and legs stand up. It set my teeth on edge.

  “Blink if you want my jacket,” he said. His voice was hushed, even though we were alone.

  I must have blinked.

  He unhooked his arms from around me and pulled off his jacket, which he draped around my shoulders like he might a little sister’s. Then his arms slid back in place and he lifted me out into the night, closed the door with a kick.

  He carried me wordlessly up the stairs.

  I wanted to shove my heel through his skull.

  Someone had propped the door open for us with a wooden stop, which Caleb knocked away as we crossed the threshold. The door slammed behind us with a bodily smacking sound. It rang in my ears like a gong.

  The entry room was a hollow, milky cavern, marked only by a staircase and a gaping, hissing hearth. There was a long rectangle on the floor where the floorboards were lighter than the surrounding planks as though there’d been a rug at some point that had since been rolled up and stashed away elsewhere. Above the hearth was a coat of arms, royal blue and gilded with griffins and fasces and a sunny-looking breaking wheel. Pugnantes Deum Amamus. Twin lacquered sabers crisscrossed below the symbol, dangling mere inches above the flames in the fireplace. The other brothers were out of sight. I could hear their voices on the walls, but couldn’t make out anything distinct. Loud, brassy voices that sitcoms assign to happy, boring bodies in picnics and tennis practices, not to the bodies of boys who dragged girls into cars. Perhaps these weren’t separate categories.

  Caleb ascended the grand stairs.

  These stairs were steeper than the ones outside. My head lolled back, the world spun upside down, and the view between the balusters made my insides quick. I was hyperaware of how precarious I was in Caleb’s arms. I felt his sinews shift with every step, felt the lack of support where his arms weren’t holding me. His grip wasn’t wavering, but the image of myself dead limp, cartwheeling down these stairs, was enough to make my guts twist. My breath hitched. I felt his eyes swivel across me for a moment, which made me want to punch his throat, because he should pay more attention when he’s walking up the fucking stairs.

  “Breathe. I won’t drop you.”

  We reached the top of the stairs, thank fucking God. Slightly less Spartan than the entryway, but everything was morbid and uncanny from my angle. Trophy antlers thorned the walls, looking bizarrely like human hands on their gold and velvet plaques. White crosses dripped off hooks and painted nails. Beaming family portraits decked the walls between the thorns and windows, and on either side of each portrait was an electric candelabra that resembled a wilting lily. Upside down, the portraits’ smiles looked gruesome. They had captions that mentioned full quivers and thankfulness.

  Caleb swept me through a doorway, and the drop in temperature crashed over me. It was atrociously cold, cold enough to bleach the air and stab needles into the back of my throat. It made my entire skull hurt, it was so cold. My toes were dangerously exposed. I felt them tinging blue.

  “Oh, Caleb, lay her in the armchair. Poor little thing. Yes, the blue one, the one your father likes,” said someone with the timbre of Grace Kelly. I couldn’t see her, but I could guess that she was close enough to touch us, because her perfume smelled like honey and it was wafting by my face. There was the whisper of slippers on the hardwood floor, then a hand placed on my ankle. “Oh, she’s freezing! Caleb, fetch her a blanket. I think your father might have started a pot of coffee. If you could fix her a cup, that’d be very sweet of you.”

  Caleb didn’t answer, but he did obediently arrange me on the armchair. He pulled his blazer tighter around my shoulders, placed my hands in my lap, propped my head up with a pillow, and slipped out of sight. His shoes clipped across the floor, and the door creaked shut behind him.

  The woman sat down in a chair across from me. She was blond as the brothers were, long-lashed and kitten-faced, and she wore a satin bathrobe that gathered around her waist with a Christmas-perfect bow. Her skin was dewy, flushed despite how late it was getting. I couldn’t place her age. She was obviously their mother, but she didn’t look quite old enough to have boys my age. I’d have guessed her at an ambiguous thirty-something. Couldn’t be right.

  “They’ll be switching off that mimic soon, I promise. You must feel awful.” She smoothed the satin over her knees and sighed. “I hope they weren’t too rough with you. Abel and Caleb are good boys, and so is Levi most days, but David can be clumsy with these things. He’s fourteen. Just starting out. I’m sure they explained it to you, so I won’t bore you by going on about it. We’re going to make you better. You can stay in our guest bed overnight, and Caleb or Elias can drive you home after breakfast. Poor dear.

  “I’m Grace. I’m the boys’ mother, and Elias is my husband. You’ll probably be meeting him shortly. It’s best that he’s the one to perform your purifying rites. Abel could do it, but I think you deserve the smoothest ritual possible after the hassle you’ve probably had. Elias is the expert. Oh, if the boys were too coarse with you, please do let me know. I’ll tell them off. They oughtn’t treat a young lady like that.” She paused to yawn and stretch out her arms, which looked, to me, like swan necks. “I apologize for how chilly it is in here. David was fiddling with the window the other day, and now it won’t shut. Oh, I should go fetch my husband—he might be able to shut it for us. I won’t bother trying. Spare us both the embarrassment.”

  She drifted to her feet and brushed her fingertips over my shoulder. “You’ve got such thick hair,” she said. “It’s lovely. I’ll braid it later, if you let me. Oh, and I’ll get something to clean up those bloody legs of yours. A little iodine and you’ll be perfect.” She half laughed, winked like I was in on some secret, and ghosted out of sight.

  The door locked behind her with a click.

  Sensation gushed back. It coursed down my sinews, wove between bones and over odd swathes of skin, and all at once I was aching. It was the kind of ache that usually followed sickness or a mosh pit, a deep, marrow-stinging soreness that pressed the breath out of me. I toppled out of the chair and onto the floor, and I could barely move my hands to catch myself before I hit.

  I didn’t know how long it’d take for Grace to wander back in here, but something in my gut said that it’d take her splinters of a second to come back now that I was moving. I was the right flavor of unlucky for her and her husband to show up and murder me this instant, or perform their freaky exorcism, or whatever. I scrambled to my feet.

  My feet throbbed like yellow-jacket stings and all the blood in my body rushed to my head. My vision splotched. I swayed with my arms outstretched, sucked a hard breath through my teeth. Fucking breathe, Sideways. I teetered upright. I had to do something. I had to tell my friends what was going on and get the fuck out of here.

  There was a phone on a desk. A real-life, honest-to-God home phone. Curly cord and everything. I hadn’t realized that those still existed. I lunged for it, seized the receiver, and shoved it under my chin, then stared down at the dial pad.

  What were their fucking phone numbers?

  A sweat broke over my back.

  I didn’t know them. I don’t think I’d ever asked. We’d only talked through a messaging app when they’d booked me for the party. Did I know any numbers? Any numbers at all? The phone beeped insistently in my ear and my chin trembled. 911. That was a number! But it was a cop number. No fucking thanks! Boris raised me better than that.

  Holy shi
t! Boris!

  I dialed the shop. My fingers were shaking like I had a fucking tremor. I did not, but I couldn’t make them move right. What had they done to me? The call went through and I squeezed the phone tighter.

  Got the message. Thank you for calling Rothschild & Pike!

  It was, like, 4:00 a.m. There was no way that they’d be awake. I tried Julian’s cell and then Boris’ and got nothing. Boris didn’t even have his inbox set up.

  Come on, brain. We have to know more numbers. Holy fuck. I knew my own number. My phone was on the pillow in Jing’s basement. Somebody would pick up, right?

  I dialed, it rang, it went to my voice mail. I dialed again. My fingers felt clumsy on the big raised number buttons. I dialed a third time, then a fourth.

  “Hello?” It was Yates’ voice. In the background, I heard muffled whining, an utterance that sounded like Who the fuck calls so early? Whoa, like, wait, where’d Sideways go?

  “Yates,” I hissed. My knees shook. “Yates, I found the Chett guy. Our hex didn’t work, and he and his brothers kidnapped me, but I’m fucking dealing with it. I’m—”

  “Wait, what?”

  There was a sound outside the door. The groan of floorboards underfoot. Soft voices. “Honey, is that a good idea?”

  “Fuck. Later.” I slammed the phone down. Grace. Fuck. My blood sizzled inside my guts. Alright. I needed a fucking plan and I needed it now.

  I rubbed my palms over the gooseflesh on my arms. Gooseflesh—that phrase felt ridiculously applicable now. I felt freshly plucked and primed for roasting. I tugged Caleb’s blazer off my shoulders and slid my arms in the sleeves, buttoned it down my torso. It was ridiculously big on me. The tips of the sleeves hit my second knuckles. I shivered once, jammed my tongue in my cheek.