The Scapegracers

by Hannah Abigail Clarke

  I stopped sawing at my steak and dropped my knife. I placed my hands on my lap, dug my nails into my thighs, inhaled too deeply for comfort. The meat, black and tan and rosy pink, was perfectly cooked. It smelled delicious. I never wanted to see it again.

  Jing watched the server go. The overhead lights made her glow, illuminated her profile in a vibrant maraschino red. Her expression changed quick, faster than a blink. I saw it happen, but couldn’t catch any specifics. She rolled her eyes back at us after a moment, shoved her tongue in her cheek. “Fuck them,” she said. She sounded dismissive, but not too upset.

  “We should curse them,” said Daisy, who was probably joking, but possibly not.

  “I’m sorry, Sideways.” Yates looked down at her salad and thoughtfully speared an artichoke heart. “God, they didn’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

  Daisy paused. She froze mid-bite of cheesecake, eyes wide, and then something feral blossomed in her expression. She shot Jing a look, wagged her brows, bent her mouth up into a hook-shaped smile. Under the table, I heard her foot rhythmically tap away, pounding out a beat like cardiac arrest.

  Her enthusiasm must mean something in some strange, unspoken language that the two of them shared. Jing perked up, leaned toward her like she’d heard her name called. They made eye contact, and both of their expressions changed. Sharper, wider, more saccharine than before. The air itched with telepathy. Daisy’s eyes flashed, and Jing inclined her head, something to the effect of a nod. She swept a lock of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. Jing and Daisy glanced at Yates in tandem, who shrugged, but not disapprovingly. All three of them looked at me.

  For a moment, I forgot that we were friends. They didn’t feel like my friends. They felt like the three heads of Cerberus. I felt like a bite-sized deer.

  “I was asking the server about Madeline. That’s what we were talking about. They say that Madeline takes a break after five songs. This is her fourth song. That gives you about five minutes to eat, give or take, so eat fast.” Daisy spread her hands on the table like she was claiming it. “We’re going to get you your spell books, Sideways. And Madeline Kline is going to help us do it.”

  I was vaguely seasick.

  Without the band playing, the restaurant felt hollow. Random discordant notes broke through low voices and clattering glasses as the musicians retuned their instruments. The pianist played a scale in E-flat minor, pausing halfway through to lean backward and talk to the bass player beside her.

  I had put my jacket back on. It was an extra layer between myself and the heavens, so that if the sky decided to open and hail its wrath on my back for what I was about to do, the jacket might deflect the worst of the onslaught.

  Madeline had slinked off the stage and was drinking water out of a wine glass on a set of rickety steps. She was chatting up the sax player, and they were talking animatedly with snickers and overzealous hand-waving. He said something musical, and she put her hand over her mouth and cackled, all snide and coy and throaty sounding. There was a distinct possibility that he might be her boyfriend, and that was unnerving. He was handsome enough—good cheekbones, long lashes, thin cornrows—and if I were inclined to have boyfriends, he might register as a viable candidate. He had a nice smile on him. Looked like he’d tell good stories at parties. Looked like he wouldn’t approve of me talking to his friend with the intention of stealing spell books from their boss.

  Atrociously, and undeniably, he was prettier than me.

  Something in my gut slammed on the brakes. How could I just edge myself into a conversation with her if she was talking to her boyfriend? How was that possible? If I was with my significant other and some random from a party interrupted valuable flirting time, I wouldn’t exactly want to chitchat. Particularly not about the subject matter I was about to be bringing up. I might deck me in the face.

  The boy looked up and saw me, and something lit up in his expression. He waved me over with dimples in his cheeks, moving casually, invitingly. His cufflinks shimmered in the scarlet lights, blinked like little eyes on his wrists.

  It was like being challenged to a duel. I couldn’t back out now, or I’d mark myself a loser. Daisy might skin me alive. I’d certainly skin me alive. I huffed a breath, squared my shoulders, and trudged toward them like I knew what the fuck I was doing. My boots scuffed the tiles underfoot. I might have been the only person in the room with boots on, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. They were cacophonously loud against the marble floor.

  Madeline swiveled her head to look at me. The rings under her eyes were plum colored, vaguely and inexplicably iridescent. Crow colored, almost. Her mouth screwed up at the corner.

  A shiver snuck down my spine.

  “Yo,” said Madeline.

  “Hey.” I gnawed on the inside of my cheeks and tried for a smile, but it fell somewhere in grimace territory. Too many teeth, too sharp, too hungry. Probably made me look like a jackass, which wasn’t entirely off the mark. I fiddled with the lining of my pockets and shuffled my weight from foot to foot.

  “Oh, do you two know each other?” The boy’s expression warmed up, and he looked back and forth between us, wagging his brows. There was something private exchanged between them, something that made me sour and jealous. Inside jokes that I’m not inside of make me spiteful. The boy winked at Madeline, then extended a hand for me to shake. “I’m Jacques. Haven’t seen you around before. It’s nice to get new faces in here, though.”

  “Sideways.” I took his hand and shook it, gripped a little harder than I needed to. Firm shake. Assert dominance. My power play didn’t register on his face, so I squeezed even harder, then let go like it hadn’t happened in the first place and put my hands back in my pockets before they could act out.

  “I was hoping I’d see you again.” Madeline ran a hand over her mouth, nodded at me. “I was sorry I didn’t snag your number.”

  It was like she’d reached up, took me by the shoulders, and hurled me against a wall. My vision swam, my lungs constricted, my heart fluttered and promptly stopped. All the punk in me evacuated. She wanted my number in a potentially gay way. Oh God, I wanted to die.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but it just curled up higher. It was a stupid, slapstick smile, the kind of smile that rendered me useless and dizzy. It felt like walking down Jing’s stairs and seeing the chalk scribbles drip down the walls. My soul felt so light that it might float out of my body and get lost in the rafters like a stray balloon.

  “Same,” I said.

  Same. Fucking hell.

  Jacques cracked a laugh. “You know what? I’m going to go get something to drink before we start playing again. You two have fun. Pleasure meeting you.” He inclined his head in my direction, clapped Madeline on the shoulder, and bounced to his feet.

  Madeline watched him go without moving her head, pupils rolling under her lashes, and then she settled her gaze back on me. She patted the chair beside her with one hand, cocked her finger with the other.

  Nerves on the fritz, I obeyed. I sat beside her and bit my tongue.

  “It was pretty spooky, what you did.” Something sparkled low in her voice. God, was she doing this on purpose? She continued, speaking lower still, inclining her head. “You know, that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

  “Yeah?” I felt my eyebrows disappear in my hairline. My cheeks hurt. God, I must look like an idiot. I bounced on the balls of my feet.

  “Really truly.” She placed her hands on her knees and leaned toward me, all serious-like. The light caught the gel in her hair and scattered it. It was so glossy it was distracting. “I keep having these weird dreams about it. About the party, and your spell. Is that weird for me to say?”

  “No. God, no. Tell me about it.” I blanched, held my breath.

  “So, it always goes like this. We’re sitting by the circle downstairs, and the music is playing and all those lights are spinning around—those lights were so gorgeous, I haven’t shaken them off
—and then everyone stops dancing. No, not stops. It’s like they turn to stone. Everyone freezes. It’s like God hit pause on everybody, except for us. And so I take your hand and we wander away from the circle, out through the crowd, but the room stretches on and on and on. Much bigger than Jing’s basement. It’s endless. The dancers’ eyes follow us, but they can’t turn to watch us go. They watch us wander around and around, until finally some stairs show up in the middle of the floor, and we climb those stairs for what feels like forever. We open the door, and right outside is the porch. No living room. It’s dark as death outside. And as soon as we walk out, the door slams behind us and disappears. Then you change. Your leather jacket still looks pink and blue, glowing like we’d never left the basement. You double over and grab at your stomach like you’re in agony, but there’s this smile on your face. You’re smiling like you just ripped the world in half. Like it was fun. You look up at me, and you hold my hands, and you start casting your spell, but I never remember the words. And then you let go of me and reach up into the sky and pluck the moon out of the stars. It’s the size of a tennis ball in your hand. Shines like a lightbulb. You peel it like a clementine and pop it in your mouth. And then I wake up.” Madeline Kline looked lost. Her eyelids drooped, half-moon and slate, and she had an uncanny wistfulness about her. Her eyes never left my face, and she looked at me like I was something to look at. She didn’t blink.

  My ribs ached.

  “You know, I don’t have my phone on me,” she said, “but if you give me yours, I can put my number in it.”

  I fumbled at my pocket and yanked out my phone, which I clumsily unlocked and thrust at her in all its shatter-screened glory.

  Her fingertips danced across the screen, and I made myself look away.

  Over at my table, the clique was sitting prim. All of them had their right leg crossed over their left, because I guess it made them powerful when they all did the same thing. Daisy was eating my steak. Yates was scribbling on a receipt with a fluffy purple pen. Jing was watching me intently, hands folded professionally on her knee. I felt her pupils dissect every awkward stray movement of mine.

  I cleared my throat.

  “About that night,” I said, nervously running a forefinger over the metal fringe of my zipper, resisting the urge to stare pleadingly at Jing or dissolve on the spot. The spell books, the spell books were somewhere in this endless house, and that’s why I was talking to her. She might have an inkling about where they’d be. I chewed on my tongue, tried to construct a sentence that wasn’t horrific. Ask her about the books! “That spell. I learned it from a book, and I’ve heard they have the rest of the set here, somewhere. Think you could be an angel and help me find them?” My voice didn’t sound like my voice when I spoke. It was too high, too halting to be mine. None of my usual faux-cocky harshness. Breathless, I pulled my bag off my back and set it crookedly on my lap. My cheeks burned. I saw spots. I opened my bag and stretched it wide, wide enough for her to peer inside it. My books didn’t move, remained worldly and serene, but even so, I felt them whispering, squirming, shifting to soak up the chromatic light. They felt heavier than they did five minutes ago.

  Madeline’s eyes popped open, and with my phone still in her hands, she leaned forward to glance inside and see the books. She abandoned my phone in her lap, dove her hands into my backpack, wrapped her fingers around one of the volumes and hefted it from its resting place with a firm tug, like she was pulling a loose tooth from my bag’s leather gums. “God, it’s heavy,” she exclaimed, and she set it on the table with an audible thunk. She stroked the little notched scales on the snake emblem and tilted her head, glazed her eyes across the details like she was admiring a Monet. It warmed something in her expression, and as she ran her fingers back and forth along the spine, over the edges of pages, across the binding’s seams, a little smile melted across her face. She scrunched her nose, crinkled her eyes, looked up at me like I’d handed her a drop of the sun.

  My palms felt cold and thawing. Sweat prickled down my neck.

  “You know what?” Madeline looked up at me from under her lashes, a wry little something flickering in her smile. She tapped her index finger on the snake seal. Her nails were painted two shades paler than the leather binding. I watched the tapping like it was in slow motion, the repetitive knocking as rhythmic and decisive as a judge’s gavel, and I felt my heart rush to sync up with it. She rolled her stray hand into a fist and leaned her cheek on it. “I’ve seen this before.”

  I unclenched my jaw. “Seen it where?”

  “Upstairs,” she mused, pulling her hands into her lap and out of sight. “I think I saw this when I was fooling around in the stacks. Maurice keeps the coolest things in the archives, and I try and sneak up there whenever I have the chance. Lots of Hocus Pocus-looking stuff.”

  “Do you think you could show me around? I’d kill to see them.”

  “You know . . .” She paused, and her hair drifted out from behind her ear to fall in her face. She glanced up at the stage, and then back at me. She sloped her back, brought herself closer to me, and dropped her voice to a gossipy whisper. “I need to go back onstage in a minute, but I can tell you where they are. People are never up there, and the security cameras are only in customer areas. If you walked up the back set of stairs instead of the main set, you wouldn’t get caught. No one would ever know. Don’t take them, of course, but I don’t see the harm in you looking at them. The archives are on the third floor, and they aren’t usually locked during workdays. Maurice doesn’t go up there very often, and he’s the only one who spends much time there. Besides, he’s off at an auction today. I think we might be getting a real Da Vinci, can you imagine?”

  “Right,” I breathed, nodding too vigorously. There was something intoxicating about the idea of sneaking upstairs, something glorious enough that I could ignore the sour fear that was reminding me of just how bad an idea this was. “I majorly owe you. Like, anything you want. Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to owe me if you take me out sometime soon. Do you like that little coffee shop downtown? The Rosewood Grind? Just get me coffee and you can consider us even.” She winked and stood up.

  My jaw hung slack.

  I nodded once, dumbstruck, and stood in tandem with her. Unlike Madeline, I shoved the chair at an odd angle when I stood, and it screeched beneath me. I couldn’t muster the ability to care about the awful sound. My brain wasn’t computing anything anymore. I’d lost my ability to process. My whole chest was vibrating like I’d swallowed a beehive, and now my insides were honeyed and stinging and struck with thousands of wings.

  “The back stairs are at the end of that hallway over there. That’s where the restrooms are, so it wouldn’t look strange if you all walked over. If you stay quiet, you should be fine,” she said with a tone of reassurance. She smoothed her trousers. “Good luck, okay? Promise me that if you find anything curious, you’ll tell me all about it when we go out.”

  “Stick a needle in my eye,” I said. I meant it. I dropped my phone in my pocket and tossed my hand through my tangles.

  “Cool,” she said. She dimpled, turned from me, and went up the stage steps.

  My pulse felt electric. It zapped through my arms and buzzed in my skull. This jacket was too hot. I was drowning. This was real, and this was happening. It was so lovely that I might die.

  TWELVE

  CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

  The hallway was slim, decked with portraits and scarlet Victorian wallpaper. It was longer than I thought it should be. The restroom doors were on either side, and at the far end was a flat, black door. It sported a silvery plaque, and the closer we got, the more obvious it became that the plaque said EMPLOYEES ONLY. It was starkly simple amid all the grandeur, sharply minimalist, and something about it was genuinely foreboding. I felt like I might be cursed if I touched the knob.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to. Daisy surged forward and gave it a twist. We followed her single file through the doorway. Jing
closed it behind us. It sealed with a neat little click. The new room we were in was surprisingly small, completely bare except for a spindly spiral staircase. The steps were mostly exposed, and only a bony rail separated the walking path from certain death by falling. Yates tossed her head back, her mouth gaping. The staircase stretched upward and upward and upward, like a spring pulled taut, and my gut said that putting too much weight on it might send the whole thing snapping down on us. It didn’t look like something built for human use.

  Jing pulled her sunglasses off her brow and put them on properly. The little hearts made her face look sweeter, but her expression turned nasty and prim. Business face. She clicked her tongue. “Third floor, right?”

  “Right.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and forced myself not to ogle the staircase of doom. Ogling might lead to wussing out. No sir.

  Jing swore. “That’s not that high. I’ll walk in front, and you losers can keep pace behind. If any of you hyperventilate, I’m pushing you off. Capisce?”

  The three of us mumbled “capisce” in response.

  Jing rolled her shoulders and swaggered toward the staircase. She stepped slowly, evenly, onto the first stair, and when it didn’t give, she stepped onto the next. After five, she looked back at us and stuck out her tongue. “Last one up is a rotten egg.”

  Daisy grabbed Yates by both wrists and tugged her toward the stairs. Daisy looked like a happy gremlin. Yates looked like she’d seen the Reaper.

  I followed behind, hands in my pockets, eyes straight ahead.

  My entire body tensed up when I started my ascent. The stairs were stable, but the exposure made me think they weren’t. Still, it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the Chantry staircase. At least now, I’d be responsible for my own falling, not some overgrown fuckboy in a suit. I picked up my pace, which made Daisy and Yates speed up in turn. Daisy was giggling, and Yates shushed her, and my stomach tied itself into butterfly knots. The helix motion was making me dizzy in the worst way. The bits of steak in me were threatening to rebel.