“What?” Sam said.
James was already heading in the direction of the stairs, and Sam followed him instinctively, sensing something serious was up.
“Remember the three guys I told you about? Who took me to that warehouse party in the first place?”
“Yeah?” Sam said.
“That’s them.” James nodded at three guys who were smoking cigarettes in Kevin’s yard.
“Wait, James—”
“Hey, assholes,” James said, his tone somewhere between confrontational and casual, so that the three guys looked up, not sure if the person approaching them was being funny but friendly or if he was seriously about to throw down.
Sam wasn’t sure, either.
“Hey, I recognize you,” the guy in the middle said.
“You think?” the guy on the right said, squaring his shoulders, his whole body tensing. “This is the shithead who got us kicked out of True Light.”
“Holy shit, you’re right. It is him. Dude, what the fuck?”
“Dude, what the fuck is right,” James said. “You three told me it was a party, not some cult initiation.”
“It was a party,” the guy on the left said, flicking out his cigarette and stomping on it. “Till you went and stole Mr. Grender’s book. He was so pissed at us when he found out we were the ones who invited you. Biggest mistake of our fucking lives.”
“Well, it wasn’t a high point for me either,” James said, but he sounded a little less righteous in his anger now, as if it came as a surprise to him that his actions had had consequences for them, too. “I know what that spell was supposed to do, by the way.”
“Oh yeah?” the guy on the right said.
“Yeah. We found it in ‘Mr. Grender’s book.’ Cutting a hole into the spirit world? That’s your idea of a party?”
This seemed to come as news to two of the guys, although they tried to hide it—and probably wanted to believe James was lying. But the guy in the middle didn’t flinch. He was paying more attention to James’s use of the word “we,” taking in Sam’s existence for the first time with an ugly smirk.
“Come on, let’s just go,” Sam said. He reached out to tug on James’s sleeve but thought better of it at the last second.
“I do remember you now,” the guy in the middle said to James. “That night, it was a girl telling you what to do. I guess you swing whatever way you can find someone willing to boss you around.”
Sam could tell without looking—his face had gone red as a beet.
“I guess I do,” James said, unfazed. “Why, are you interested? You seem like the type who likes to do the bossing.”
“You’re sick,” the guy said.
“Better sick than stupid.”
The guy let out a joyless laugh and shared an eye roll with his buddies, and for a moment, Sam entertained the hope that that was the end of that. But it turned out to be only the silence before the storm, as with hardly a second’s warning, the guy lunged at James in a full-body tackle.
The fight was fast and mean, the two boys scrabbling on the ground like snakes let out of a bag.
Sam shouted for help, which only made the people up on the porch run to the railing to get a better look. The guy’s friends tried to reach in to break up the fight, but the tangle of arms and legs was too kinetic for them; they kept getting punched.
Somehow, in a terrifying burst of aggression, the guy managed to bring his body around so that his knees were on James’s chest and his hands were on his neck.
James was choking, struggling to breathe.
Again, the guy’s friends tried to pull him off, but it looked like the guy had gone fully berserk, his killer instinct taking over.
Why was no one else coming to help?
In the exact second before Sam threw his body at the guy, James emitted a roar like an old boulder coming to life. It was a terrifying sound, panic and rage in one. Primordial had been the word Delia used for his magic, and it was primordial magic that Sam was feeling now, the very ground beneath their feet quaking until it ruptured, sending spikes of earth shooting from the dirt all around James. The guy who’d moments ago had him in a death grip suddenly went flying, flung by the peaks in the yard, his body twisting as it fell. Both the guy’s friends were thrown off their feet, too.
Sam heard screams from behind him, as people up on the porch gripped onto the railing, fearing another quake.
James scrambled to his feet, his breathing ragged and heavy. There was something about him in that moment that seemed decidedly unhuman; Sam was reminded of the actress in Celestine—the one who became a tree.
James was a force of nature, and he walked right over to where his attacker’s body lay at a painful angle. He kicked the guy once, twice, again. The guy let out a groan of tremendous pain.
“James! Enough!” Sam cried. His voice was shrill, hysterical. He’d heard and felt each kick as if it were landing on him, too.
James relented but didn’t budge from where he stood, until finally Sam forced himself to move, coming around and grabbing his friend by the arms, pulling him back away, rounding the side of Kevin’s house and running them straight to the street, where at least twelve cars were parked in a conspicuous line.
James half-resisted Sam the whole way, and they could still hear one of the guy’s friends shouting, “We’re gonna kill you! We’re gonna find you and fucking kill you!” But as Sam put more distance between the two of them and the party, the fight went out of James.
They made it to Sam’s car, where Sam opened the passenger side door and literally placed James in his seat. It was like the reality of the situation was setting in, and James was sinking back into the ancient stone from which he’d burst forth moments ago.
Sam put the car into drive and peeled out of there. He waited until they were safely out of the subdivision, always glancing behind him, expecting the headlights of another car, but none appeared.
Finally, when they were back on a main road, Sam let loose.
“What were you thinking? Causing an earthquake like that? Getting into a fight like that? Calling him stupid? You only had two beers! You can’t tell me you were drunk. I mean, Lord, do you know what it would do to your UGA application if you got suspended? Or went to jail? You’d end up working on roofs with your dad forever. You’d never get out of here. Shit. If those guys don’t come after you for what you did to them, Kevin might come after you for property damage. Are you going to say anything, or are you going to sit there in silence the whole way home?”
Still, James said nothing.
“Why did you go to that warehouse party in the first place, James? Why did you stay there when it was obviously not a party? Why did you take their book?”
“Are you done yelling at me now?” James said, his voice frighteningly monotone.
Sam gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, but he forced himself not to respond.
Finally, after an unbearably long silence, James said, “I went to the warehouse party for the same reason I said yes to tonight: because I thought it would be fun. Turns out I was wrong.”
Then he switched on the radio, not bothering to change the station when happy pop music flooded the car, letting it fill the space between them with how wrong it felt.
“Let me out at the corner?” James said when they reached his block.
And so Sam did, and then he made the drive home.
Once, in the days before Sam came out to his parents, when it seemed like every little thing could set off a yelling match and often did (moody silences, not enough cereal in the morning, perfectly reasonable knocks on his door that Sam would call invasions of privacy), Sam had looked at his mom and said, “Why do you have to fight with me all the time?” And, rather than pointing out that Sam was fighting with her just as much and as often as she was fighting with him, his mom had very calmly said, “Sometimes, Sam, we fight with people because we care about them too much to give up on them.”
Sam ha
d thought the line was utter bullshit at the time. And things with his parents had been so good for so long since he came out; clearly, there wasn’t some corollary where caring about someone meant you had to fight with them.
But right about now, Sam found himself remembering those words of his mom’s and hoping they were true. Because either Sam and James cared about each other so much that the dam had finally burst tonight and their feelings had rushed out faster than they could control them, or else Sam and James had just had an apocalyptic falling out, the fire and the flood.
Chapter 13
SAM HAD GAINED ONE THING, THOUGH, IN THAT TOTAL disaster losing streak of a night, and that thing was a name. “True Light,” the guy had called them. He’d been “kicked out of True Light” for bringing James to their spirit party.
Unfortunately, True Light was a hard phrase to look up online. There were countless results, ranging from various unrelated churches to actual LED light companies. Sam was momentarily distracted by a random fan page dedicated entirely to the aurora borealis.
But he wasn’t seeing anything about a True Light near Friedman, Georgia. Not until he decided to check a fringe forum site for magickers that he almost never visited, given its reputation for hate-speech, conspiracy theorists, doxing, and worse. It was the site Sam always imagined as being populated by child predators, actual children, and no one in between. He hated even typing in the URL.
On this site, a search for “True Light” once again turned up plenty of results, less about church and light bulbs and more of the spell-casting variety, with the top post being a spell that promised a handheld but narrow light beam that would shine brightly as far as you could see, piercing fog and other elements that gave other light spells trouble. Based on the likes and responses, this spell seemed like a real winner, easy to replicate—and of course, here was Sam getting distracted again.
He went down deeper into the results, passing spells that were less about light and more about lie detection, passing rituals that required the light of the aurora borealis to function, passing stupid memes that had very long strings of words in them, two of which just happened to be true and light, until finally, when he was on the verge of giving up, he found a post that didn’t even have “True Light” in the subject line. The match appeared in the body of the post; the subject line was “Mr. Grender.”
Sam felt chills crawling up his arm. Mr. Grender. That was another name those guys had said tonight.
The post was recent—only six days old. It had zero likes and zero comments, and Sam read it with an increasing sense of recognition—and dread.
39 yo male here, looking for help w/ advanced protection spell. Don’t know where else to turn. Cops don’t believe me. Keepers won’t even respond to emails. This is re: group called True Light, led by Albert Grender (“Mr. Grender”). I lived with True Light for seven months after friend in rehab told me about it. Started out good. A place to live and meet people. Cheaper than rehab. Then shit got weird. Won’t go into specifics but point is now I have these visions, like nightmares. Some stuff I saw when I was there, but some new stuff—definitely a spell. I’ve tried wards, sleeping spells, cloaking spells, all of it. Nothing works. And these people are DANGEROUS. Have been getting away with shit for a long time. Serious commenters only. Thanks in advance. —Carl
Sam didn’t know what to do. He was tempted to respond with a link to Findias—maybe Vi could give this Carl person something to protect him. But maybe getting mixed up with him would be asking for trouble. Even if Sam believed him, the guy had lived with True Light for seven months. Surely that made him a little dangerous, too.
“Everything okay in here?” Sam’s mom said at his doorway, and her sudden appearance made him jump back with a little yelp.
“Jeez, Mom, you scared me.”
“Sorry. You’re back from the party sooner than I was expecting. No fun?”
“Really no fun. Like, the least fun.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Maybe later? I’m still kind of processing.”
His mom gave him a good, long stare—the kind that he knew had magic in it.
“Okay,” she said. “But I’m going to hold you to that.”
All night, Sam tossed and turned. He wasn’t sure when he finally fell asleep, but when he got out of bed at noon on Sunday, he distinctly recalled seeing 4:03 a.m., 5:11 a.m., and 6:14 a.m. on his phone.
He texted Delia that he needed to talk to her right away, but when she didn’t respond, he remembered that she was working the after-church shift at Chili’s today, and decided that it couldn’t wait. His parents were still at church themselves, so he wouldn’t be missed.
Sam didn’t often visit Delia at work, because she was too much of a rule follower to get him free food beyond the occasional skillet cookie “for his birthday,” and also because she was usually too busy to hang out anyway.
Today, Sam took a seat at one of the tall tables for two and ordered a Coke. There were so many families here dressed for church. He may have been imagining it, but it seemed like people kept looking his way, wondering what a teenager in a T-shirt and jeans was doing by himself on a Sunday afternoon. All it would take was one person from Friedman High recognizing him as the gay magicker, and who knew what choice words their parents would have to say to him on their way out. That’s how it always happened in Sam’s imagination, at least. He was always expecting the hammer to fall, because it did fall, constantly.
Finally, Delia came over to his table.
“What’s going on?” she said, smiling but under no illusion that Sam had come here just to say hello.
“Hey, sorry to bother you at work,” Sam said. “I couldn’t really sleep. It was kind of a rough night.”
“How so?
“Long story. I know you’re busy. But the short version is, James and I ran into some people from the warehouse compound whatever party. They call themselves True Light. And then I found this post online that is about the same people. I think this True Light group has been around for a while.”
“Oh, yeah. I sort of figured that,” Delia said.
“You did?”
“Yeah. There were a few things in the book that made it seem that way. A lot of the spells were handwritten, with corrections and additions and stuff, which made me think one person had written the original entries and others had added to them over the years. I think that’s why they were so hell-bent on getting their book back.”
“Okay,” Sam said, drawing the word out in a question. “Were you planning to mention that at any point?”
Delia shrugged. “It seemed like you didn’t want to talk about the book any more after we sent it back. I got the impression you only wanted to move on.”
“I mean, I do—”
“How’s it going over here?”
It was Bob, Delia’s shift manager. A nice enough guy, but he always called his employees his “Chili’s family,” and he was a bit overzealous with awarding “employee of the week,” as if he really loved his job. Delia hated him.
“Everything’s great,” Delia said. “Sam was asking me about those new corn fritters, and I was telling him that they’re the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“That’s right. I think I’m going to order some.”
“Well, that does sound good,” Bob said. “I’ll put in that order with your section waitress. In the meantime, Delia, I think I saw one of your tables waiting for their appetizers?”
“Getting right on it,” Delia said, walking off with a big smile on her face that morphed into a grimace for Sam when Bob wasn’t looking.
Which, yes, that was funny. But Sam was still stuck on the other thing. What else did Delia know that she wasn’t telling him?
Unfortunately, the crowd never really died down, and after Sam finished his corn fritters and two refills on his Coke, he had to accept that Delia didn’t have time to come back. They would have to pick up this conversation later.
Sam tr
ied to test the waters with James over text message, thinking ahead to how awkward it would be to see him at lunch on Monday if they hadn’t made up. But James’s one-word responses gave nothing away, because that was often the way James responded to text messages, even when he wasn’t mad. Sam was used to this feeling, of wanting to read between the lines of every little thing but forcing himself not to, to accept James at face value. Maybe the reason things felt different now was not that James had changed, but that Sam had.
Neither option felt good.
The Fascinators’ practice on Monday felt worse.
James and Amber showed up as a unit again, this time before Delia and Denver arrived. Sam kept trying to participate in the conversation, but Amber and James had this dense, impenetrable way of talking, predicated on references and inside jokes that may have started at church but now went beyond it, and neither of them made much of an effort to give Sam the necessary annotations. James was avoiding Sam’s eyes entirely, as if their fight from the weekend was as fresh in James’s mind as it was in Sam’s.
When Delia and Denver got there, practice hardly became more inclusive; instead, they fractured into two distinct groups, with Amber and James working together and Sam and Denver working together, as Delia went back and forth to offer help, having already made such confident strides in her own categories that she felt her time would be better spent on everyone else.
It was the first Fascinators practice Sam could ever remember wanting to end before it was over.
The magic, as it were, was gone.
It almost came as a relief when, at the end, Denver said, “Random idea, take it or leave it, but I wonder if we’d feel like we had more room to spread out and really work on some of these hands-on spells if we were in a bigger space, like the Friedman gym? I still feel kind of bad about breaking your window last week, Sam.”
“I guess two extra people really does change the way we take up space,” Sam said.
“Actually, this sort of goes right into something I was going to suggest,” Delia said, her usual presidential confidence giving way to something more unsure—something nervous. Instantly, she had the room’s attention. “I’ve been so busy lately, between work and Pinnacle application stuff. And, like, I really am happy to practice with the group sometimes, but I’m sort of feeling like the usual after-school hours are getting harder for me, which is going to make scheduling a regular meeting difficult. Even today, Mr. Eckels was saying people could come by after school for extra credit in AP Chem, and I can already tell I’m going to need it. And Friday, I’m supposed to help my sister move a hoarder’s worth of belongings from one apartment to another.”
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