“Sure,” said Jing. She sounded dismissive. Maurice did not look amused. Before he could open his mouth to say anything else, Jing’s phone chirped in her pocket and she fished it out, held it at arm’s length. “Sideways,” she said sharply, not bothering to look at me as she spoke. “Our ride is here.”
I gritted my teeth.
The spike of her heel ground into my foot.
“We’re off,” said Jing succinctly, and she slapped a twenty on the bar. “Come along.”
I flared my nostrils, hissed in a breath. I wasn’t done, but my foot screamed under Jing’s heel. I swallowed and stood up, shaking off Jing’s foot in the process. “Whatever,” I said under my breath. I felt my shoulders hunch forward defensively and stuffed my books back into my bag.
Jing’s hand found my wrist and she yanked me away from the stools. I turned my head to say something, anything, to Maurice, but he just gave a lazy half salute and motioned for a third drink. I looked ahead, my throat tight. Jing’s hand slid down from my wrist to my hand, and she looped her fingers through mine and led me out the door.
“I wasn’t done,” I said.
“You should’ve been.” Jing didn’t look at me. Her fingers were cold against my skin. “I don’t trust him, and we shouldn’t keep Daisy waiting. She hates that.”
The sticky feeling inside my sweater wriggled around my stomach, like I had an eel curled up against my skin. Several eels, a whole wreath of them. The feeling crawled up me, squirmed up to my collar, ducked beneath my hair.
“Thank you,” it said with the smallest, highest voice. It was so slight that I could’ve missed it, could’ve written it off as a trick of a stupid, weary mind. “If he put me in a vase again, I think I’d eat myself alive.”
SEVENTEEN
THE HOUSE HORROR WARNED YOU ABOUT
That night I balled up my sweater and hurled it across the room. I stood on my bed and stared at it, waited with Julian’s baseball bat in hand for it to move.
“What are you?” I bounced on the mattress, shifted from foot to foot. “Why have you been following me around, huh?”
My sweater stayed a sweater. It didn’t grow giant crab legs and scuttle away. It didn’t even shiver.
“I know you’re in there.” Swung the bat around to prove a point, or at least suggest one. I wasn’t sure that hitting this thing would work, or if it was even something that could be struck.
The sweater didn’t move, but it looked a shade lighter now. All its darkness seeped into the carpet, rushed under the bed in an amalgam of milky black droplets.
My guts flew up to hit the roof of my mouth.
“You freed me. You didn’t turn me over to the Delacroix House. I want to be your friend, Sideways. I want to help you, if you let me.” The silky, slipping voice came from all around me. The sound of it coated the back of my throat.
“I don’t need help.” I swallowed, but the feeling wouldn’t leave me. “I don’t need you to follow me.”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
I opened my mouth, but I lost sight of the inkiness. The devil melted itself into the creases of my room, blended with the shadows.
“Just for a little while,” it said. “Just until I find people to be with, if I cannot be with you. But consider it, Sideways. It’d be my honor.”
My mouth clamped shut like a bear trap. My pulse hammered in my ears. I sat down, still clutching my bat, thought about wailing at the open air. But that thought was beat out by a stupid, cloying sympathy.
I remembered being a sticky devil-something without anywhere to go. “Just for a while,” I said. “Don’t make a scene, okay?”
“Okay,” it said. “Now get some sleep.”
I dreamt that there were dead deer all over my floor and that the Chantry boys stood around my bed with their hands on my arms and my shins. They pressed down, mashed me into the mattress. Their palms were cold like metal. The deer around the bed piled up like leaves.
Oh my God, dream-me said. Oh my God, oh my fucking God, get the fuck off me, get away from me.
One of the dream-Chantrys clucked his bright pink tongue and tsked. “Come on, Eloise. There’s no need for profanity.”
Classes blurred into one another. The mundanity of it all was stifling. Could I care about math more than I cared about magic? I hadn’t cared about math in the first place. My life was full of friendship and ink devils and witchfinders and, holy hell, Madeline Kline, and I couldn’t stomach our state-mandated curriculum. Anticipation for this weekend sizzled like pop rocks in my bloodstream, and it was all I could do to take notes and pretend to listen to the katydid drone of teacher after teacher, none of whom cared any more than I did.
My phone burned in my pocket. Madeline had only texted me once, but that singular sentence rattled around in my head.
Psyched for tomorrow.
I’d texted back something stupid and short, seen at 10:00 a.m., and she hadn’t said anything after that. I know she didn’t because I’d checked all of twenty times. Nothing. But it was a positive nothing.
By the time I took my lunch to the Scapegracer table, Daisy was already entrenched in conversation with Jing. There were the usual flyby fans of theirs, people who said hello and woefully showered them with panicky compliments as they passed by, but I thought there were fewer than normal. A few people seemed more interested in just staring. On the stage, Mickey-Dick, Ashleigh, and Tina made a show of pretending to gag themselves with sporks. Anyway, Jing and Daisy were discussing something about a fight that’d occurred between first and second period. According to Daisy, there was still blood on the lockers. Jing’s face said that this was total bull, but Daisy seemed convinced, or at least pleased to keep the story going. Meanwhile, Yates was bent over what looked suspiciously like Physics homework. I sat beside her and saw, to not much shock, that the homework Yates was looking over was already finished. She was highlighting key phrases.
“Hey, Sideways,” she said without looking up. “Does this look right to you?”
“Lila Yates, your homework is fucking immaculate,” said Jing, pausing mid-sentence to stick her tongue out at the open notebook. “It’s always right. You’re our baby genius.”
“Baby geniuses like second opinions, too,” said Yates.
I stifled a laugh. “You want my opinion on Physics?”
She nodded vigorously.
I eyeballed the page, understood none of its contents, and gave her a vague thumbs-up.
This was apparently enough.
“So, do you have anywhere to be after school? No? Awesome. We’re showing you the place we’re throwing the party.” Daisy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “My aunt has already started the costumes. They’ll totally be done in time. She’s super excited about it. We have to take a lot of pictures for her, but that’s a given.”
“They can put the pictures in the museum they’re going to make about us,” said Jing with a smirk.
“I think you’re going to approve of the venue, Sideways.” Yates looked away from her homework long enough to pop a grape into her mouth. “It’s awful.”
“It’s perfect,” Daisy insisted. “Absolutely perfect. I’m beyond psyched for this, alright?”
“We’ll meet you at my car,” said Jing. “Try not to dawdle, okay? I want to beat the traffic out of here. We need to set up a little, though the real setup will be right before the party.”
“Will do,” I said. My stomach, which had been screaming all day, reminded me to open my lunch box. Inside was a sandwich, strawberries, and not one, but four lollipops. Julian. I sighed, rolled my eyes, and passed them out.
Yates perked up. “Aw, thank you, Sideways!”
“It was Julian,” I said with a wave of my hand. “He’s a sweetie.” He was probably just excited that I have friends to give candy to, honestly. This was his indirect Julian-style attempt to ensure that I still have friends by the end of the week.
Jing stuck the sucker between her teeth. “Thanks. R
ight. Sideways, you have our sigil sketches, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She gave me a sharp nod. “Good.”
I kept checking the time. It was getting compulsive. Classes couldn’t go fast enough, and when the final bell finally rang, I was out the door before most kids were done packing.
Still no texts from Madeline Kline.
Was Mr. Scratch with me? I couldn’t tell. My clothes all smelled kinda tart, and lots of them were sticky. I wasn’t sure if it was me or him.
Jing’s cherry convertible played a song with heavy bass. The song was cranked high enough that I felt the beat pulsing through my shoes, and a haphazard crowd of friends and admirers flocked around the bumper, seemingly oblivious to the pounding music.
Daisy was sprawled across the hood. She playfully kicked some boy who was trying to lean in closer. She didn’t seem to like him terribly much. “You’re boring,” she sneered, jamming the toe of her cheer sneakers squarely in his rib cage. The boy coughed, then chuckled, and the cycle repeated.
Jing honked, and a group of girls who’d been leaning against the trunk jumped. Jing leaned her arm out the window, pulled her sunglasses down a notch, and snapped a gum bubble. “There you are. Get your ass in the car.”
I rolled my eyes, felt a smirk come on, and pulled myself into the back seat. Yates had been waiting there. She was drinking a bottle of orange soda as though it was a vodka martini. She waved and jerked her thumb toward Daisy, who was still sunning herself on the hood.
“That’s Dylan,” she said. “Daisy’s current nothing. It won’t last. I don’t think he knows that, though.”
“Idiot.” Jing looked at her nails. “Boys are replicable.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before,” I said. He didn’t look particularly remarkable. He had clear skin and a ginger buzz cut. Letter-jacket type. Not my thing.
“He’s JV. I give him a week, tops,” said Yates.
Jing scoffed. “I give him an hour.”
Daisy, seemingly sensing that it was time to leave, slid off the hood and flounced around to the passenger’s seat. The boy gave a half wave that she didn’t return. She turned to the radio and fiddled with it, and a different song, something raunchy and electric, poured out of the speakers.
We sped away, and I chanted a bit of our protection sigil’s incantation for defense under my breath. Repeating bits of the spell without a ritual attached didn’t reinforce it or anything, but it reminded me that the spell was there and keeping me safe, and at least it was something to do that wasn’t fixating on the car’s engine sounds. Town was to the left, but Daisy pulled to the right. As far as I knew, nowhere worth going was in this direction. Sycamore Gorge proper was only about six miles around, and beyond that was a wasteland of cornstalks, construction sites, and Wi-Fi-less wilderness. Also, one would assume, a gorge. The colonizing town founders were real clever, clearly. Regardless, driving this way made zero sense. I couldn’t see us having a party in a crop circle, at any rate.
Stalk not, witchfinders. Don’t see me and stay very fucking far from me. Stalk not, stalk not, stalk not.
“Where the fuck?” I started, but Daisy and Jing didn’t look back. I doubted they could hear me over the sleazy lyrics. Instead, Yates looked up and curled her lip.
“Slasherville,” she said.
Jing took a turn off the main road, and the pavement turned to gravel. The tires crunched. Trees whorled by like outstretched arms caught aflame. There was a lurch in my gut. Fuck cars, fuck cars in the woods, fuck cars in the woods crunching over broken asphalt. My whole body swept with shivers. I kept my eyes open and I fixed them on the back of Daisy’s head.
The road snaked back and forth without explanation. No mailboxes, nothing suggesting a hidden rich-folk retreat. Trees and trees and more scorching trees. Crimson leaves clustered in heaps across the road. Something deer-shaped flashed beside us.
“How much farther?”
Yates shrugged. “Not much.”
Jing slowed to a halt.
The road (or path, more like) opened into a clearing. There was enough space for thirty cars max, a sort of makeshift cul-de-sac, likely for turnaround purposes. Zero signs of civilization. The trees stretched back forever.
“Get out,” Jing commanded. “Sideways, take your notebook.” She opened her door and stepped outside, and we all followed suit. Daisy looked ecstatic. Yates had her arms crossed securely over her chest. She left her pop in the car. The three of them veered left, and I trudged close behind with my notebook tucked under my arm.
They stopped. Daisy wolf whistled. It took me a moment to process what I was seeing.
A rickety wooden staircase descended from the lot. Half the steps were crooked, and all of them were rotting. The guardrail was growing mushrooms. Beyond the stairs, looking like a carcass, was a house with a rickety porch. Where the windows weren’t boarded up, the glass was cracked and dingy. The white paint peeled off in ribbons. The shingles were gray green with lichen and looked like unbrushed teeth.
“We found it while exploring a while back,” said Jing. She gave the house a nod. “Totally abandoned. We looked it up. It’s condemned. Nothing we can’t do to it.”
Daisy patted the backpack on her shoulders. “We’re not using chalk this time round. We don’t want someone scuffing it up. We’re spray-painting this bitch all over the floorboards.”
“How the hell will people find this?” I shifted my weight. The house was a death trap, sure, but they had a point. No one would give a singular fuck what happened to it. And it certainly had the right vibe. Made my skin tingle. I wanted to go inside.
“They’ll find it,” said Jing. “It’s easy to get to, it’s just out of the way. Simple instructions: right past the high school, take a left, and keep going. They can’t fuck it up.”
Yates grimaced and we made our descent.
Inside, the house was cavernous. The decaying spots smelled like rain. Most of it was one open room, with high ceilings and crumbling molding. The walls were grimy and finger smudged. A few slouchy armchairs sat across from a long couch, but someone had slashed them all open and yellow stuffing sloughed out the sides. A back window was patched with newspaper and duct tape, and it made the light that filtered inside look sallow.
Jing pulled her bag off her back. “We’re drawing the sigils now. I want as much set up before Friday as possible.” Lo and behold, Jing produced three cans of spray paint from her bag. She tossed one at me and I caught it. My jaw hung slack. “You sure about this?”
“Positive,” said Jing. She blew a bubble and popped it.
Yates sighed, pulled the notebook out from under my arm, and leafed through it. “If we’re doing this, we need to make sure we get the lines right. There’s no redoing it if we dick it up.”
“Aye-aye,” said Daisy. She took the third can of spray paint and shook it hard.
Yates rolled her eyes up into her skull. “Great,” she said. She knelt, placed the notebook on the floor, and motioned for us to gather round. “We’re starting with the circle, then working inward, alright?”
Jing clicked her tongue, which meant yes.
Yates pulled a ziplocked bag out of her pocket. “I brought chalk,” she said matter-of-factly. Sure enough, she withdrew a pale blue stick of chalk from the bag. She held it like a pen. “I’m tracing everything out, and then you three can go over it with the paint. If you screw up what I draw, that’d seriously suck. I’ll be grumpy. Avoid that.”
I shook my can of paint and grinned.
Yates pressed the chalk to the floorboards and the line work bloomed.
I had paint beneath my nails.
We stood back and admired our work. There was something ridiculously sexy about the way sorcery looked spray painted across the floor. We’d outdone ourselves. The red lines splattered in swirls and zigzags over the warped floorboards. Confident lines. Power strikes. The sigil spiraled from the middle of the room outward, ending about three feet from th
e walls in every direction. The far wall read REIGN OF SCAPEGRACE, courtesy of Daisy, who might have been a little overzealous.
It looked ever so slightly like a crime scene. There were wannabe violent-kitsch Satanic rituals in the eighties where they slaughtered randoms for Baphomet’s glory, weren’t there? If so, this could pass for one of them. It made the hair on my arms stand up. This was more official, more damning than that chalk had been. It would not be washed away. Whatever happened on Friday night was going to last forever.
We hadn’t stopped at the spray paint, though. Jing and Daisy and I had nailed a few hooks into the walls at Yates’ behest. It wasn’t a bad move. Hooks meant that we could suspend our lanterns over the party, ensuring that people didn’t kick them aside or accidently stomp on them. Made for a better display of our handiwork, too.
Daisy checked the bathroom downstairs. The water lines must’ve been cut at some point, so the bathroom situation was dubious, but bathroom situations were always dubious at parties. Not like the aftermath would be our problem. We avoided the top floor. Gave us bad vibes. We decided we’d caution tape it up and avoid its weirdness altogether.
The couches and chairs were shoved against the walls. The papered windows were left papered. We cleaned up some broken glass, but that didn’t take long. Our venue was, for all intents and purposes, finished. It’d be cold in here at night, but all those bodies packed close would help correct the situation. We’d friction our way to warmth. Besides, our robes would trap all our body heat. It’d be like wearing a blanket around. Thank God we hadn’t picked something skimpy.
“This place gives me the creeps,” said Yates, eventually. We’d been admiring it for a while now. Jing had been taking pictures. Yates stood apart from us, more toward the center of the room. She stood in the sigil’s center, the place where I would sit. She hugged her arms to her chest, gnawed a strip of skin off her bottom lip.
The Scapegracers Page 24
