The Graces (2 page)

‘Yes,’ I said. But I had misjudged it because his eyebrow rose.

‘Er, okay. Sorry for disturbing you,’ he said, and turned away. I lowered my fork.

NO, WAIT!
I wanted to shout. You were supposed to say something self-deprecatingly witty at this point, weren’t you, and get a laugh, and then you’d see it in
his eyes – he’d think you were cool. And like that, you’d be in.

But nothing came out of my mouth, and my chance was slipping away.

The only other person in the library was this guy Marcus from Fenrin’s year (always Marc
us
, never just Marc, I’d heard someone say with a sneer). He had the kind of presence that folded inward, as if he couldn’t bear to be noticed. I understood that and gave him a wide berth.

So I found it interesting when Fenrin turned to Marcus and locked eyes with him instead of ignoring him. And instead of trying to be invisible, Marcus held his gaze. Fenrin’s mouth drew into a thin, tight line. Marcus didn’t move.

After a moment more of this strangeness that wasn’t quite aggression and wasn’t quite anything easy to read, Fenrin snorted, turned and caught me watching. I tried to smile, giving him an opening.

It seemed to work. He folded his arms, rocked on his feet.

‘So, at the risk of looking like an idiot coming back for another serving,’ he said to me, ‘why
do
you enjoy being alone?’

My mouth opened and shut and I gave him a truth, because truth had got me this far, and truth
seemed like it would endear him to me more than anything else ever could.

I forced myself to look straight into his eyes. ‘I can stop pretending when I’m alone.’

Fenrin smiled.

Bingo, as my mother often said.

There was a story about the Graces, a story so woven into the fabric of this town that even my mother had already heard about it from someone at work. It was about Thalia and Fenrin’s eighth birthday party.

Grace birthday parties had been legendary up until then. Most of the mothers around town would pray that their child would get an invitation, so they could come, too, and lounge in Esther Grace’s spacious French country kitchen, drinking cocktails in slender flutes and stealing glances at her pretty husband, Gwydion, as he passed by with his easy, loping stride.

The party had been fairly standard all afternoon. The mothers had put on their most carefully chosen outfits, their most vibrant shades of lipstick, and had lingered in the kitchen drinking freshly made mojitos with mint from Esther’s sprawling herb garden. Their tinkling laughter had grown stronger as the day wore
on, and they had stopped checking on the children so often, who had had their fill of food and party games and were congregating in the parlour. The Graces had the kind of house with a parlour.

No one knew for sure who suggested the Ouija board, but most of the children thought it was Fenrin. He was a show-off, after all. They’d been strictly forbidden to touch it, but that didn’t stop him from producing the key to the cabinet it was stored in and balancing carefully on a chair to reach the highest shelf. Down it came, a solid shape wrapped in a rust-coloured velvet cloth and bound with loops of black ribbon. When the ribbon was undone and the velvet unravelled, there sat a sandalwood box that gave off a creamy wood smell when you put your nose right up to it.

Half the children felt their hearts quicken in fear. Because what if? But Fenrin just laughed at them and said there was no such thing as ghosts, and did they want to play or did they want to be sissies for the rest of their lives?

So they played – every last one of them.

For the truth of what happened next, you’d have to talk to the parlour walls. Accounts varied so wildly from child to child, no one ever did know for sure exactly how it had played out.

When the adults heard screaming, they rushed into the parlour and found Matthew Feldspar on the floor, his eyes shut and his breathing shallow. No matter how violently his mother shook him, he wouldn’t wake up.

He was rushed to hospital.

By the time they arrived he had come to, and the doctor who examined him assured his mother that he exhibited no signs of physical abuse. Tests turned up nothing unusual, and the eventual conclusion was that he had suffered a fainting fit of some kind. Perhaps he hadn’t eaten enough that day. Perhaps it was a reaction to all the excitement a birthday party could bring.

Mrs Feldspar, however, was not having any of that. She was adamant that Matthew was not a weak boy and had never fainted in his life. She much preferred the idea that something had been done to him, something that a doctor wouldn’t be able to see. Something only the child of a witch could inflict.

Accusations flew around for weeks afterwards. Some said it was revenge – Matthew had a reputation for spreading rumours, as well as for goosing other kids to make them cry. He’d apparently done it to Fenrin only a couple of weeks before, and then told everyone Fenrin had enjoyed it just a bit too much. Fenrin had tried to punch him in gym class and earned detention for it. After that, things seemed to have died down.
Until the birthday party.

Mrs Feldspar said that Matthew was a playful boy, that was all. She tried to press criminal charges, but the police laughed at her. She tried to sue the Graces, but lawyers told her there was no evidence of any kind of assault on her son, and without evidence she didn’t have a case.

The Feldspars left town not long after that.

No one was allowed to go to Fenrin and Thalia’s ninth birthday party; but instead of feeling snubbed, the Graces went right ahead with it, inviting a whole swathe of people from out of town. For days before, you could see them arriving at the house. Some of them looked like rock stars and some of them like
American Psycho
, a few were as coolly bohemian as the Graces, and all of them were striking, in one way or another.

The twins’ birthday was 1 August, and if you went past the top of their lane on that day, you could hear music and laughter coming from the garden, and smell ginger carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting, sausages in mustard sauce, and freshly made lemonade.

Every year Thalia and Fenrin had their birthday party, but no one from school ever got another invitation. Two or three days before, the town was flooded with Grace strangers, and two or three days afterwards they were gone again. The most popular
rumour was that they were witches from around the country gathering for some kind of debauched ritual. The birthday was an excuse, the town whispered – after the children went to bed, the adults held their own, darker kind of party.

For a long time after that unpleasant eighth birthday, anything that went wrong was blamed on 1 August. It started as a joke between the town adults: ‘Stubbed your toe? Must be the Graces’ fault.’ This was taken on by their children and woven into scary fact. For instance, one year, old Mrs Galloway had fallen down
for no reason
and died the next day, not a week after 1 August. Another year, a fire in the school gym happened on 2 August. And how would a gym just catch fire like that? Another year, four separate kids came back to school in September with their parents’ recent decisions to divorce hanging over their heads like leprosy. Something bad happened every single year after Fenrin and Thalia’s birthday, without fail.

It was the town’s own Friday the thirteenth. It was their punishment for judging them.

That entire week I ate my lunch in the library.

Every time someone came in, my heart skipped and I waited to see a shadow fall over my desk. But the only other person who was there as much as me was Marcus. I wondered why he was in the library every lunchtime. I wondered most of all what that look between him and Fenrin had meant. There was history there, but the town’s rumour mill on the Graces hadn’t supplied that particular story, and I could hardly ask either of them myself. Not yet.

Fenrin never showed up, but Summer did.

The next Friday, the library’s double doors swung violently open, slamming back against the walls. Marcus, sitting two desks away from me, jumped. Summer strode in, looking around with undisguised disgust. She paused just inside, as if striking a pose. If
anyone else had done that, I’d have choked on my own disdain. But Summer looked like she would forever not give two shits what you thought because what you thought wasn’t worth giving two shits over. And it just worked.

She slowly folded her arms over her chest, scanning the room. Her long black hair had been wound into a coil at the nape of her neck and her lace-up knee boots creaked very slightly in the silence as she shifted her weight. All this I saw in the instant before her eyes fell on me, and one brow rose.

She walked over to my desk.

‘Hey, new girl.’

‘Hi,’ I said, startled.

‘You’ve been here a couple of months, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s March. How come you transferred in the middle of the school year?’

The official reason was that we had to move because of my mother’s new job.

The unofficial reason would die with me.

She rolled her eyes at my silence, put her back to me and turned her head so it was silhouetted above her shoulder. I tried to commit the movement to memory.

‘Are you coming?’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘One-time-only invitation.’

One time only.

This was it.

Don’t screw it up,
whispered the voice in my head.

I didn’t intend to. I shoved my empty Tupperware box into my bag, the fork rattling around inside, as well as the dog-eared paperback I’d been reading. Summer had already moved to the doors, not even looking back to see if I was following. I had better keep up.

She strode through the corridors ahead. Most people were in the cafeteria, but the few milling about watched her surreptitiously as she passed them. I walked a couple of paces behind – not enough to crowd her, but enough to signal to others that I was allowed to be there.

We reached the locker corridor, and as we passed Jase Worthington, he said, ‘Stupid goth bitch.’

Summer stopped.

His friend Tom, whom I had briefly fancied when I first got here, hissed, ‘Dude,
don’t.
’

They were both popular surfer types, Tom much shorter than the rest of them and constantly irritated by it. That meant they naturally fitted in with Fenrin, who was in the same year as them, and I had thought they were all friends. A friend of Fenrin’s would never dare to start on any of his family like that.

Especially not Summer.

‘Oh, Jase-ington,’ she said, with a fluttery sigh in her voice. ‘I simply don’t have time for you today.’

I began breathing again. Summer started to walk off.

‘Ooh, what are you going to do?’ Jase jeered. ‘Put a spell on me?’

She threw him an impatient look over her shoulder. ‘Of course.’

Silence.

It wasn’t until we’d reached the double doors at the far end that Jase suddenly yelled, ‘I’m not afraid of you! You’re just a faker! Your whole family is a bunch of stupid carny fakers!’

‘What a superlative vocabulary,’ Summer muttered. ‘What an intellect. What a—’ She stopped herself.

Someone else would try to comfort her or suck up. I said nothing.

We moved across the outdoor hard courts, where a couple of other boys from Fenrin’s year were kicking a ball about. It was starting to drizzle, and their game looked dismal in the half-light.

‘Hey, Summer,’ said one of them. She stuck her tongue out at him as she passed, but there was a little smile on her face.

I felt her gaze light on me.

‘What?’ she said, challenging me to comment.

I shrugged.

‘Wow, you really are the silent type, aren’t you? Cards close to your chest, right?’

Was that bad? Was I treading too carefully with her? I couldn’t tell.

We were making for the copse at the end of the field, where a huddle of trees and low bushes gave people some shielding from prying teacher eyes.

‘I was kind of seeing him,’ Summer said, as if we had been talking about it already. ‘Jase. He may be hot, but my god he’s dull. It’s a smoke weed and surf a lot kind of life. I mean, there is literally nothing else that interests him. Plus he’s bad in bed. He’s all loud groaning, like a crap zombie.’

I disliked these kinds of conversations. There wasn’t an obvious response. I didn’t know him, so I couldn’t exactly agree.

‘Oh right,’ I tried.

We reached the copse. There was a lookout, this sullen girl called Macy who was good at making herself useful to popular people. She eyed me up and down.

‘Is everyone there?’ Summer asked.

‘Everyone who was invited.’

The last was directed at me, but Summer didn’t even appear to notice.

‘Come on,’ she said. My shoes slid over a squelching carpet of leaves as we walked further in. It was pretty
useful, this place. The clearing beyond was hidden from view by an array of tall bushes. No one could approach from any other way than the field, as the copse backed onto a wall, marking the boundaries of school property. One lookout on watch and you could do what you liked here without being seen.

In the clearing, sitting in a ragged circle on their coats, were a few girls from our year. I knew two of them were particular friends of Summer’s right now. They had at least ten piercings each and always wore band T-shirts with snakes or insects or rivers of blood splashed across them. The one with jagged, pillar-box-red hair, Gemma, was the perky kind of girl who everyone liked. I’d never really hung out with her, but I’d been paired with her in maths a couple of times – she was unfailingly nice. The other girl, Lou, had jet-black hair like Summer, two nose piercings that she had to take out before school every day, and a low, wicked laugh.

There were three others, and when I saw who one of them was my heart dropped. It was Niral.

What was she doing here? She didn’t hang out with Summer. Was she trying to get to Fenrin? Our last meeting came back to me in full Technicolor glory.

There’s the copse at the back of the field. Nice and secluded.

Summer sat in a gap in the circle, and Gemma obligingly wiggled sideways to make room for me. I watched Summer clap her hands together once, in a weirdly formal gesture. The others stopped talking and looked up at her expectantly. I could feel their eyes flickering over me. I knew what their eyes meant. I wasn’t supposed to be here.

‘Did you bring what I asked?’ said Summer.

Each girl started rummaging in pockets or bags at their feet. Lou took out a black velvet cloth and spread it out on the ground, smoothing it down. Onto the cloth each girl placed an item. Red tea-light candles. A deep, crimson-coloured cooking pot. Little glass herb bottles from the supermarket. Scissors.

Niral burst out laughing, pointing at the cooking pot. ‘What is
that
?’

Another girl flushed. I always confused her with at least two other girls in our year because they had the exact same long blonde hair and wore similar clothes. ‘She said bring a red container, so I did!’

‘You make, like,
stew
in that, you dope.’

‘It’s exactly what we need,’ Summer said, with an unusual calm to her voice. ‘Did you all bring an item?’

No one moved. I hadn’t brought anything, but then I hadn’t exactly had any notice.

‘I take it that’s a yes. Don’t worry, we’ll all have
our eyes closed when you drop it in the pot. No one else will see it.’

Summer took out a book of matches and lit each tea light, placing them in a rough circle around the red pot. She then took up a glass bottle – basil, I caught on the side of it – and sprinkled the contents around the pot, letting them flutter down onto the tea lights, which sputtered and burned the dried herbs, giving off a wispy smell.

I should have been happy. This was it – the confirmation I’d needed that the rumours about the Graces were true.

It was just that I’d thought this kind of thing was done with a bit more … style.

Supermarket herbs and red tea lights?

‘Summer,’ I muttered. Everyone was watching her.

‘Yes,’ she said, in the same calm voice. She was starting to unnerve me, and I wasn’t the only one. The world had gone strangely quiet. There were only the sure movements of Summer and the coiled silence of the group.

‘I don’t have an item,’ I said.

She straightened, raising her voice for the rest of the circle.

‘It doesn’t matter. The item is significant to you, but it’s just a channel.’ She shrugged. ‘If you’re
powerful enough, you don’t need any kind of item at all. Or even any candles, or any of this. You do it by will alone. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet.’

One or two of the girls snickered nervously.

‘This is how it will go,’ said Summer, and no one doubted her one bit right then. ‘We will start the chant. The chant raises energy inside each of us. We’ll do it with our eyes closed. We’ll do it until enough energy has been raised. If it takes an hour, it takes an hour.’

‘But lunch is over in, like, twenty minutes,’ said someone.

‘Why do you care? What’s more important: this or some class? You guys
asked
me to do this. You badgered me for weeks. So now we get to it, you’re all running scared?’

The circle was silent.

‘This is only going to work if you put everything you have, everything you
are
, into it.’ Summer sat back on her haunches. ‘No holding back. No thinking about other things. This is magic, and it’s hard. If you break concentration, you lose energy. Lose energy and the spell won’t work. You’ve got to be here, with me, right now, for as long as I need you. As long as it takes. Are you in or are you out?’

I felt a knotted thrill blossom deep inside my guts. I was wrong. This was real. She was the real deal.

‘Commit,’ Summer stated in a cold voice. ‘Each of you say, “I’m in all the way. I’ll give everything I have.” Say it now. Lou.’

Lou replied without hesitation, her voice eager. I’d have felt embarrassed for her if I didn’t also feel the way she sounded. ‘I’m in all the way. I’ll give everything I have.’

Summer made each of us say it. A couple stumbled, awkward. When it came to me, I wondered at how steady and clear my voice was. It’s surprising what you can get yourself to do when you want something badly enough.

‘The chant is this,’ she said.
‘Bring them to me. Make them see.’
She paused. ‘Substitute
him
for
them
. Or
her
.’ She flashed a wicked smile, the first I’d seen since we’d reached the copse.

Niral snorted, nervous and irritable. ‘It’s just a rhyme. How’s that a spell?’

‘Words have power. But the words are meaningless without your intent behind them, driving them. The rhyming is just to help even idiots remember what to say. Now shut up and join in, or leave. If you bring doubt, you wreck it for the rest of us.’

A couple of the others threw Niral irritated looks. I dared to join in, and Niral saw it.

‘I’m not bringing doubt,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘I’m in.’

‘Then let’s start. Close your eyes.’

I watched them all do it. Then I closed mine.

Instantly, I felt vulnerable and embarrassed.

This was stupid. This was really stupid. What if a teacher came?

‘Bring him to me. Make him see,’ said Summer, her voice soft. ‘Bring him to me. Make him see.’

No one joined in at first. I felt like laughing. I swallowed it.

‘Bring him to me. Make him see,’ I said, my voice mismatching hers. But I kept on until we were in time with each other. More voices joined in. Muttering, stumbling at first. But the more we said it, the less it made sense, and the more we fell into each other’s sounds, like a flock of birds turning together.

I don’t know how long we chanted. I don’t honestly know. It could have been forever. I never lost it, like a dream where time has lost all meaning because you no longer feel it, and it just kept rippling out from us,
bring him to me, make him see,
and I started to drown in the rhythm because there was nothing else.

‘Lou,’ Summer said. ‘Open your eyes and put your object into the pot. The rest of you, don’t you dare stop chanting.’

It registered, barely. I heard a little clink. I couldn’t have stopped chanting. My voice was being pulled
out of me.

Summer said something in a low voice. Rustling.

I didn’t stop. None of us stopped. Whispering sounds, rolling around me, again and again.

‘Lou, close your eyes, keep chanting. Gemma, open your eyes and put your object into the pot.’

Summer went round the circle. It seemed to take years to get to me. I was the last.

‘Open your eyes,’ she breathed into my ear.

I did, but it was hard, like they were stuck together with honey. I blinked and looked around. Somehow, I expected it to be dark.

‘Cut a piece of your hair,’ Summer said, and offered me the scissors. She held something tightly in her other hand, and I couldn’t see what it was. ‘Put the hair into the pot. As you do, visualise the one you want. Visualise them right in front of you, as if you could lean forward and kiss them. Don’t let go of their face.’

I took the scissors. My muscles were liquid. My head was buzzing with the noise of the chant. I cut a long strand and held it up between my fingers. I looked beyond it, and I saw his face. His antique gold hair flopping down, brushing his cheekbones. His grin. His eyes on mine.

I leaned forward and put my hair into the pot.