Sam and Delia swayed on their feet, stunned. Sam couldn’t stop picturing his friend, trapped and alone and afraid—last week in that warehouse, but as a kid with his mother’s makeup, too.
“So you don’t actually know where you teleported the book to,” Delia said, two steps ahead of Sam, as usual.
“I hadn’t done that spell in so long. The first time, all the stuff went back to my bedroom, so I thought the spell would work the same way now. But when I got home last week and the book wasn’t there, I did the spell again—experimented with it some more—and nothing went to my bedroom. It’s hard to explain, but I think all the associations for this spell are about safety—a safe place. And I guess there was a time when that meant my bedroom, but that hasn’t been the case for a while now.”
Delia sighed. “And you really think this dirt road in the forest is the last place you felt safe?”
“As soon as I left the warehouse that night, I used that camouflage spell you taught us in seventh grade, then booked it down the street until I found this road. I called a Lyft to take me back to Mike’s and then waited for like thirty minutes in complete darkness for it to get here, the whole time thinking that those assholes were going to come after me. Not exactly a safe place, no, but I’ve checked everywhere else I could think of in the last week. My nana’s house, church—I even came into school during freshman orientation to look around.”
“Forget the book,” Sam said. “Can’t you report these people to the police?”
“Report them for what?” James said.
“I don’t know. Were they drinking? Maybe providing alcohol to minors?”
“Nobody was drinking as far as I saw. Besides, if this goes to the police, I’d probably be the one to get charged with robbery.”
“Now that you mention it, why haven’t these guys reported you to the police?” Delia said.
“That’s the thing. I think they really were up to something shady. I don’t think they want the police involved any more than I do. And I’m willing to bet they don’t want the police to see what’s in their book, wherever it is. I’m betting there is some serious illegal magic in there. Like, the-Keepers-would-come-after-them level shit.”
“So now you’re in a checkmate. Or stalemate. Or something,” Sam said.
Darkness had fully descended now. They stood in a triangle, lit only by the fairy light of Sam’s hands.
“It might be a stalemate, but they are on the offensive,” James said. “Ever since that night, I’ve been having these . . . dreams. More vivid than normal dreams, and I have less control over them, too. I think somehow these people are behind them. It’s like my brain has been hacked. Like they’re threatening me in my own mind. I had another one in the car this afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve had one while I was awake.”
James didn’t need to tell them the specific contents of these dreams. Their aftereffects were clear on his face.
If these people were capable of the long-range dream magic James was describing—when Sam couldn’t even cast a lesser dream spell on himself after a whole summer of trying—what hope did the three of them have of defending themselves if it came to that?
They had to find the book. That was all there was to it.
“Well, the book’s definitely not here,” James said, defeated. “Can you drive us back to the parking lot?”
Sam nodded, happy to have something concrete he could do for James—something unmagical. After everything that had happened on this very long first day of school, Sam almost wished his sense of self weren’t so wrapped up in the magic thing. It didn’t leave him on the surest footing in moments like this, when the magic didn’t feel so fun anymore.
Chapter 4
SAM DIDN’T SLEEP VERY WELL THAT NIGHT, AND HE spent the second day of school in that semi-delirious state where everything was a little funnier than it should have been and a lot more exhausting. He might have put his head on the table and fallen asleep at lunch, except that Amber joined them again—this time at the beginning of the period—and Sam felt an immense pressure to sit up and be at least as charming as she was. Which, that would have been hard to do even on a full night’s rest. Amber was basically charm city.
Maybe because Amber was at their table, James was doing an admirable job of acting like everything was fine, though the deep bags under his eyes gave him away. Sam wished there were more he could do to help; it was torture watching James fake smile and fake laugh when he must have been scared out of his mind, and even Amber seemed to be picking up on the fact that James wasn’t totally on his game.
It was all Sam could do to make it to his locker in one piece at the end of the day.
When he got there, it was to find the new boy, Denver, his thumbs hooked under the straps of his backpack. He was apparently waiting for Sam to arrive. All six feet of him, plus the dimples.
“Hi,” Sam said, painfully aware of how his voice sounded, even on such a short syllable.
“Hey, Sam. What’s up?”
“Me, but only barely. I mean—I’m tired. Hi. Sorry, I said ‘hi’ already.”
Denver laughed. A small mercy.
“How did you know which one was mine?” Sam said, nodding to his locker.
“Louise Baxter. She didn’t know which one exactly, but she said it was around here.”
“Ah,” Sam said, though really his heartbeat was skipping like a rock on a lake. Denver had gone out of his way to ask a random senior where his locker was. That was an astonishing and flattering amount of effort.
“In all the excitement yesterday, I didn’t realize until I got home that we never actually said when the next Fascinators practice was going to be.”
“Oh, right. Of course you wouldn’t know. We usually just coordinate over group text once Delia gets her schedule from Chili’s for the week. We do whatever three days she isn’t working. We’ll have to add you to the text.”
“Does that mean we can exchange numbers?” Denver said. “Or will James make up a reason for me to guess that, too?”
Sam blushed. Maybe Denver wasn’t as bright-eyed as they’d thought yesterday. (But maybe Delia was right about him not being straight, because p.s., was Denver flirting with him? People didn’t say “exchange numbers” in the real world unless they were flirting with you, surely?)
“You heard about that, huh?” Sam said.
“Ms. Berry stopped me in the hall to ask how it went. When I said I passed the tryout by the skin of my teeth, I could tell by the confused look on her face that I’d been initiated, chump style.”
“Sorry about that. If it makes you feel better, we were all super impressed.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Denver smiled. “That does make me feel better. Anyway, I know I’m the new kid on the block, and you three have been friends for a million years.”
“For better and for worse.”
Denver quirked an eyebrow.
“You know how it is, I’m sure,” Sam said. “From your friends in Nashville. I couldn’t survive Friedman without James and Delia, but sometimes—like this year, when I don’t have them in any of my classes—I remember that not everyone speaks our weirdo language, and I think maybe I should have spent more time practicing being a normal human.”
“Well, sign me up, I guess. All I need is your number.”
Sam held up his phone for Denver to see his contact info before he could ruin it by saying anything else. Almost immediately, he received a text from Denver that read, Hello ☺.
“Hey,” Sam said. “About yesterday? I totally understand if you want to keep most of your secrets, but you have to tell me one thing. You can’t, like, full-on read my mind, right?”
“The day I can read minds is the day I drop out of school and take this show on the road. Until then, let’s just say the thing my old magic club found most useful was my affinity for luck magic. That, combined with the fact that James most likely wouldn’t have thought to call out the money i
n your wallet unless it was some exceptional number, like a thousand dollars or zero dollars, et voilà.”
“Well, hot damn,” Sam said.
Denver waved the phone in his hand and turned to go.
“Talk to you soon, Sam.”
“If you’re lucky,” Sam said, earning surprised smiles from both of them.
Just as she refused to sell the mansions of Friedman, Sam’s mom refused to live in one of them, too, even though she and Sam’s steel engineer father could easily have afforded one if they’d so chosen. Instead, Sam lived in one of the newer subdivisions, which Delia had once described as Variations on a Theme of Vinyl Siding. Still, out of the three friends, Sam’s house was the nicest, and Sam’s parents were easily the coolest, too, keeping a fridge stocked with Cokes and staying out of their way during practices in Sam’s basement.
When Sam pulled up to his house that day—with Delia and James following right behind him—he saw that Denver was already there, standing awkwardly in the driveway.
“Someone’s excited to see you,” Delia whispered through a smile as she came up beside Sam. She’d given him no end of hell at lunch when he told them about the incident by the locker, by way of explaining how Denver came to be in their group text. (Thankfully, Amber had gone back to eating with her own friends.)
“I will cast an eternal binding curse on you if you don’t stop that right now,” Sam whispered in return.
“Sorry,” Denver said as they approached. “It took less time to get here than I expected. I almost drove around the block another time, but then I thought, why waste the gas?”
“No worries. Sorry you had to wait out here. My parents are still at work.”
The four of them made their way straight for the basement. They’d barely reached the bottom of the stairs before Delia started pulling papers from her backpack. At first Sam thought it was the Pinnacle syllabus again, but then he realized the stack was way too thick for that.
“This is every finding spell I could pull together in time,” Delia said. “I even used some of the finding spells to find additional finding spells.”
Denver laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” Delia said.
“Why do we need finding spells exactly?” Denver said right away, trying to pretend his laugh had never happened.
“Because James—” Delia started.
“Because James lost the spell book we put together last year with everything we were preparing for convention,” Sam cut in. He’d seen James’s face go pale from the first moment Delia mentioned finding spells. He suspected it was because James didn’t want to loop in Denver on this secret yet, if ever. To Delia’s credit, she seemed to pick up on that now.
“Oh, damn,” Denver said. “How’d you do that?”
“Not all of us have your gift for good luck,” James said, and even though his voice was friendly enough, Denver shot Sam a look, surprised that he had shared that tidbit with the group.
“Sorry,” Denver said. “Just thought a little backstory might help us find it. This is why I suggested the shared drive, by the way. This exact thing happened at my old school the year before I joined the club.”
“And after today, I think we should absolutely take your advice,” Delia said. “For now, I’ve arranged these finding spells in order from most advanced to least advanced. I figure the most advanced spell would probably work perfectly if one of us could pull it off, but if we can’t, we’ll need to move on to an easier one. Hopefully the first spell we’re able to do will still be strong enough to find the book.”
“How methodical of you,” Denver said.
Sam smiled. “There’s a reason she’s president.”
“Are you sure we should be doing this right now?” James said, with a pointed look Denver’s way. “Maybe it would be better if we all took some of these home separately and only attempt them together when we know what works?”
“Merlin’s Law,” Delia said. “The more the merrier the magic.”
Denver wasn’t stupid. He could see there was something else they weren’t telling him. But Sam had a feeling his mind wasn’t going as far afield as the truth.
“Whatever,” James replied. He really did look the worse for wear today, like a stranger in a James suit—like he’d forgotten how to James.
Delia said, “Why don’t you describe the book more. For most of these spells, the associations are more about the thing you’re trying to find than they are about the act of finding itself, so it helps to have as clear a mental image as possible. Obviously, this is for Denver’s sake, since Sam and I already know what the book looks like.”
James clenched his jaw, no doubt wishing he had shared his predicament with better sneaks—or not shared it at all. But he said, “It’s green leather, about yea big, with this symbol on the front.” He replicated the spell to produce the lightning-bolt V. “Does that give you an idea?”
“I guess,” Denver said. “I’ll do my best.”
“Same,” Sam said. “For what little that’s worth.”
James frowned reflexively. He hated when Sam was down on himself, no matter how many times Sam said he was kidding. James was the consummate protector, which he always said came from being a big brother.
Either way, it turned out that this time, Sam wasn’t kidding. His best, and Denver’s best, and even Delia’s and James’s best, altogether weren’t enough to make the first finding spell work, or the second, or the third-through-sixth. Sam suspected this had a lot to do with all four of them having slightly different mental images for the book they were trying to find, and also something to do with the fact that three of them were concealing the full story of what they were doing from the fourth. Real magic, in Sam’s experience, never worked as well on a foundation of dishonesty.
There was nothing about the seventh spell in Delia’s stack that suggested it was going to work better. Like a few of the others, it would require them all to close their eyes and picture the book. Also like the others, it would require them all to recite a simple chant. Unlike the more powerful spells, this one didn’t even promise to illuminate the exact location of the object in question. It promised a strong mental image of the object’s immediate surroundings; if you didn’t recognize what you saw, well, tough luck.
Delia read the associations out loud. “Picture the object in your mind, then poke at the periphery of what you see. If you can conjure the details, the feelings, the associations, you will start to recall the object itself, and once it has been recalled, it can be reclaimed.”
Which—all right, then!
This wasn’t the first time Sam had done a spell whose associations suggested a link between imagination and memory. And in a way, the connection always made sense—once a thing was in the past, it might as well have been imaginary, since it existed in the mind in the exact same way.
But sitting in a circle on the thinly carpeted floor of his basement, Sam was finding it incredibly difficult to conjure the feelings and associations he had for this book he’d never seen in real life. His mind kept wandering to something more immediate: James’s and Denver’s fingertips on his. (After the third failed spell, Delia had insisted that they all hold hands going forward, even though Sam didn’t remember this being one of the tenets of Merlin’s Law.) Holding James’s featherlight hand while simultaneously having his hand held in Denver’s firm grip was not helping Sam concentrate on a giant green spell book—not one bit.
But, as often happened, Delia’s suggestion proved ingenious. The longer Sam held James’s hand, and chanted the chant, and pictured the book, the more he could start to see James in the darker moments of that night last week, following his impulse to slip into the side room and see this book. Because why? Because James couldn’t help himself. Because for as long as Sam had known him, his anger at his dad, the pressure he felt at having to be a responsible big brother and role model for Benji, meant he resented his own life too much to make safer decisions, starting with the drinks that
night but only snow-balling from there. Because it never occurred to James that there were people who cared about him so much that it hurt. Or maybe because James knew about these people, and that only made the pressure worse.
Suddenly, Sam could see it all so clearly—James with the book that night, his reckless curiosity driving him into danger. He could see James having gone there in search of a good time, and then, having failed to find it, wanting to take something with him, a kind of anarchist’s revenge. He could see James walking into the side room, an orderly office space with filing cabinets full of books, all surrounding a central, circular table that looked like it was set up for a card game.
The lights began to flicker—in Sam’s vision, but maybe also in the basement of Sam’s house. Sam had the sense that the flickering was just beyond his vision, and that if he could only open his eyes, he would see what was causing it.
But he couldn’t open his eyes.
And he couldn’t direct his vision.
Suddenly, it wasn’t James in the side room—it was him. The door to the room opened, and at least five people poured in, though it was hard to say the exact number, as the flickering intensified, painfully bright with each pulse. The people were faceless—there was no other way to say it. Where their eyes and mouths and noses should be, there were only blurs. The people swarming and surrounding him turned their blank no-faces as if to get a better sense of him, there in the room that was only what Sam was imagining and not a real room—the real room—surely? Surely? It was a powerful association and nothing more?
But then why did it feel like Sam was confined to the room? Couldn’t leave? That he wasn’t controlling what he was seeing, and that the faceless ones were walking toward him, reaching, a hair’s breadth away—that Sam couldn’t move, that his feet were welded to the spot.
Sam heard his name being called from just beyond the doorway, and the faceless ones heard it, too. It made them hurry. It made them lunge for Sam with their not-quite-hands, and Sam had to spin and dodge to avoid them. He made a dash for the door, the faceless ones hard on his heels, while the voices outside grew louder, calling his name.
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