The Fascinators

by Andrew Eliopulos

  “Sam. Leslie. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Blame senior year,” Sam said with a shrug.

  “I had to roll this one off the couch this morning,” his mom added.

  “Ah, yes, sleeping in. I remember what that was like. Well, I’m happy to have you back. You know the drill. Adult group in the back, teens upstairs, and I think the coffee might actually be hot today if you’re still feeling tired.”

  Sam smiled and parted ways with his mom, heading upstairs to a room where six teens he didn’t know were already arranged in little cliques—a group of two, a group of three, and a girl by herself whom Sam sat next to, because she wasn’t just alone, she looked positively miserable.

  “I’m Sam,” he said, taking the chair a couple seats down from her.

  The girl looked up as if she was surprised and a little wary of being spoken to.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Is this your first time coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s probably my . . . fiftieth meeting? Can that be right? I think so, which is insane.”

  “Ha.”

  Sam had met enough people like this at Q-Atl over the years—people who gave one-word answers, never revealing much about themselves—to know that it was best to let them come out of their shells in their own time, only if they wanted to. Half the people came here looking to forget what was happening at home or at school.

  But when Emma walked into the room a few moments later, she said, “Ah, Sam, I see you’ve already met Liv. I was hoping you two would chat. Sam, Liv could give you a real run for your money in the micro-storms department.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Sam said, turning to include Liv in the conversation, but her eyes were on the floor again.

  Emma moved on from the moment without missing a beat, having the teens circle up and introduce themselves with their name, preferred pronouns, and favorite movie. They were off to the races, and as the conversation started turning to their daily lives, from the microaggressions they were facing to the ups and downs of dating, Sam instantly remembered why he’d loved coming to Q-Atl in the early days. Delia and James understood the part of him that loved learning a new spell and feeling the magic click into place inside him, but these would-be strangers understood the part of him that lived in constant fear of being jumped if he stared too hard at a guy’s arms. The part of him that wasn’t sure what to believe vis a vis God and religion, because he’d never felt welcome enough in a church—or by the people in that church—to figure it out.

  The forty-five-minute meeting flew by, and as everyone started gathering their stuff to go, Sam tried one more time to reach out to Liv, hoping she’d gotten as much out of today as he had. She’d stayed awfully quiet on nearly every topic, but based on the few things she’d said, Sam got the impression she wasn’t living with her parents.

  “So, where do you go to school?” Sam said. “Are you in your school’s magic club? Sorry, two-parter.”

  “I’m not really in school at the moment,” Liv said.

  “Oh. Shit, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay. But Emma’s helping me out.”

  “Emma’s good people. Way back when, she helped my mom see it was okay for me to be out and agnostic, even if everybody else in Friedman might think that means I’m going to hell.”

  “Wait, you live in Friedman?”

  They were almost to the door that led back downstairs, where Sam’s mom would be waiting, but Liv had stopped cold.

  “Yeah?” Sam said.

  “And are you, like, in any magic clubs?”

  “Yeah, I’m in my school’s club. I’m the treasurer, pulling double-duty as secretary, but I’m easily the weak link . . . Why do you ask?”

  “I was lucky to get out of a group down there. Not in Friedman, but right by it.”

  Sam was confused. “You mean Lakeside High?” It was the only other high school Sam knew about within a thirty-minute drive of Friedman High. But Lakeside hadn’t even fielded a magic club team for convention last year.

  “No, not a school group. More like a cult.”

  Sam felt his mouth go dry and his arm hair prickle.

  “Wait . . . you don’t mean True Light, do you?”

  “That’s fucking exactly who I mean,” Liv said, her face coming alive, but not lighting up—in fact, her face did the opposite of lighting up. “You know them?”

  “I know enough to know they’re horrible people,” Sam said quickly, because it seemed like his even knowing about them was enough to make Liv want to hurt him.

  “That’s the fucking understatement of the century.”

  The floodgates had been opened. No more one-word answers for Liv. Her hands were balled into fists.

  “How so?”

  “What do you know about them already?” Liv said, searching his face. Beneath the hard veneer of anger, Liv was obviously scared. It seemed like she didn’t trust Sam, which he could understand and forgive, in light of the circumstances.

  “I know that they have a book that’s all about trying to break the barrier into the spirit world. And I know that my friend kind of stole that book, which meant that the good people of True Light kind of threw a rock through my car window, which means that I kind of want to find them and punch them in their collective face, if I can’t punch each of them individually in the face.”

  “Your car window?” Liv said, as if he’d just said his golden spoon had a crack in it. “These people are psychotic. If your friend’s who I think he is, you’re lucky you’re alive.”

  Sam took a step back into the wall. They were the only two people left in the room. Sam’s mom was probably watching the stairs right now, wondering why he wasn’t coming down. Any moment, she would come up here to check on him. “Do you know what they’re really trying to do at True Light?” Liv pressed. “With all the spells in that book about the spirit world?”

  Sam shook his head but didn’t say a word. He could hardly breathe. Liv was all the way in his face. She was articulating each word with a jab to his chest with her pointer finger.

  “They’re stealing magic from other people. They’re like giant fucking mosquitos, sucking it out until it’s gone. Why do you think they’re camped out in the middle of Bumblefuck, Georgia? Why do you think they handpick abandoned losers like me to join? Because I’m good at little storms? Hell no. It’s because no one would give a shit if something happened to me. You ever heard of a person alive who didn’t have magic?”

  Sam shook his head as much as he could in the limited space.

  “No, you haven’t, because it isn’t possible. Your magic is right up there with your brain or your soul. Ignore it all you want to, but you can’t live without it. I only barely got away myself, not that anyone cares.”

  Sam wanted to say something to reassure Liv that this was ridiculous. That of course people would miss her. That she was probably exceptional at little storms, and she shouldn’t count herself out in that regard. But such reassurances were so woefully beside the point of what he was hearing, so worthless in the face of these frightening details and Liv’s own frightening anger, that saying them was only likely to get him punched in the face.

  “Well,” Sam said finally, because Liv was still leaning into him, waiting for some kind of response. “I guess it’s a good thing you got out.”

  “Did I, though?” Liv said, but she took a step back. Whatever she was seeing behind her eyes, it was haunting enough to overshadow the fight that had been building inside her.

  “Have you told Emma about any of this?” Sam said.

  “There’s nothing she can do. She would want to go right to the police or whoever and get it all sorted, but it wouldn’t work. It would only put her in danger.”

  “How do you know? I mean, that the police couldn’t do anything about it. I’ll bet there are some Keepers on the Atlanta police force. Are there really that many True Light people, that it wouldn’t be enough?”
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br />   “It’s not a number thing,” Liv said impatiently. “It’s a power thing. It’s an idea. The head of True Light says an angel brought them this secret of magic. So, when you see their magic in action—and when they let you in on a spell to suck all the magic out of some unsuspecting newbie—you start to think, hey, maybe these people are onto something. I don’t know about an angel, but maybe this magic of theirs is really something, you know? That kind of thinking, combined with that kind of power? It’s like a virus. And the only reason it hasn’t spread wider is because they don’t want it to—they’re keeping it to themselves, denying anyone who tries to speak against them until they’re ready, and then, when they’re ready—”

  “How’s it going in here?” Emma had reappeared at the door. She was leaning against the doorframe, looking friendly as ever.

  “All good,” Sam said, when it was clear that Liv wasn’t planning to respond. She’d sunken back into herself, her face expressionless, eyes hollow.

  “Okay, well, your mom’s all finished up in the adult group. You’re welcome to hang around a little longer if you want, but I have a feeling your mom wants to get you back home before dinnertime. I hope you won’t be a stranger, though. Liv and I would love to see you again next month, isn’t that right, Liv?”

  Liv nodded, and Emma smiled sadly.

  Emma had no idea.

  “Thanks for—for talking,” Sam said. “Do you maybe want to exchange numbers? Or are you on Friendivist?”

  “I don’t have a phone right now,” Liv said, “and I’m never getting on Friendivist again.”

  She gave him one last defiant look for the road.

  “Okay, then,” Sam said.

  Sam headed downstairs, where his mom was waiting by the front door.

  “Everything all right?” she said.

  “I’d tell you it was, but you’d know I was lying.”

  On a hunch, Sam checked the magicker forum again that night, and while he clicked obsessively through one thread after another, he couldn’t find the post about Mr. Grender anywhere. It was just gone.

  It was like Liv had said—these True Light people weren’t ready to have their secrets shared, and they were powerful enough to see to it that they weren’t.

  The question was, how much of what Liv had said did Delia know?

  Was Delia hoping she would be one of the anointed inner circle whose powers would increase at the expense of some poor nobody? Or did True Light think she was some poor nobody herself?

  If they knew her parents were laissez-faire-going-on-neglectful, maybe they’d see her as an opportunity. Maybe they’d take her magic and leave some forged note with her parents about how she’d run away.

  Oh . . .

  Can you talk? he texted her. It’s kind of important.

  At least she didn’t wait long to respond—not bothering with a text, but calling him directly. He’d worried she might still be too mad at him after Friday.

  “Hey,” Sam said.

  “What’s up?” She sounded uninterested. Busy. Maybe she was still mad at him after all.

  “So, I went to a Q-Atl meeting today, and I met this girl, and I swear I didn’t bring it up myself, but she was telling me some stuff about True Light that has me seriously concerned for you.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me with this right now?”

  “Um, no?”

  “This is why I didn’t tell you in the first place, you know. I knew you would do your judgy thing and tell me all the reasons why, after much over-analysis and moral grandstanding, you’d decided that this was not the right thing for me. I didn’t think you would stalk my movements or make up some fake new girl to try to get me to go along.”

  “I’m not making this up, you weirdo. I’m trying to prevent you from getting killed.”

  “Oh, right, you’re protecting me. Because I am just a weak, helpless girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “Actually, I wish you were a helpless girl who didn’t know what she was doing. It’s scarier to me to think that you might know what you’re doing with those people yet you’re doing it anyway. Do you know what Liv said? That’s the girl I met today—Liv. She said that the spell James interrupted that night wasn’t trying to break through to the spirit world at all. It was trying to steal the magic from half the people in the room for the leaders. This is some serious cult shit, Delia.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam, and it’s clear that this girl Liv didn’t either. Anyway, one person’s cult is another person’s extracurricular. Why don’t you go talk to James about cults, huh? He and Amber seem to be going to church an awful lot at this point. Who knows what they’re getting up to, right? Maybe you should put a camera in James’s room so you can find out.”

  Sam flung his phone across the room. It hit the wall with a sickening crunch.

  Chapter 16

  HE STAYED HOME SICK FROM SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY.

  He didn’t even have to pretend. After a night of no sleep spent worrying that his two best friends in the world no longer liked him, he tried to stand up at seven thirty and felt dizzy and hollow.

  His mom said she would call the school for him.

  Around lunchtime, when he was feeling more anxious in bed than he would out of it, he got up and made himself a Hot Pocket, then went to work gathering everything he needed for the most complicated spell he had ever attempted.

  He’d torn this spell out of a magazine sophomore year—one of the sensationalist tabloids that he always saw at the check-out aisle of the grocery store—and he’d stuffed the page into the back of his sock drawer as if it was something obscene, because, on some level, it had the potential to be.

  It was a soothsaying spell.

  It promised to show you the future.

  Even for expert magickers, the best of the best, divination magic was a tricky business. Soothsaying spells were, more than anything, like scientific hypotheses without the data. They represented an attempt to wade through the noise-that-is-everything and emerge with a clear and persuasive grasp of the way things were, which, in turn, would make a case for the way things were headed.

  But since no one could ever agree on the way things were, interpretations of the way things were going varied wildly. And when a prediction failed to come true, it was usually impossible to tell whether that meant the spell hadn’t worked, or whether the spell had worked but the interpretations of its findings had been wrong.

  None of that, however, prevented this magazine from boldly proclaiming that its unique combination of scrying, dowsing, and symbological techniques was guaranteed to hit you with the kind of out-of-body revelation that was too real to be a memory. Too vivid to be bullshit.

  The reason Sam hadn’t tried this spell before was that he was always happy enough with the way things were. The temptation had always been there—to peek into five years later, see if James and Delia were still in his life, and if so, in what capacity. But greater than the temptation was the fear. The fear that Sam wouldn’t like his five years later. The fear that James and Delia wouldn’t be in it at all.

  Now, Sam was coming to terms with the fact that he might never have had a clear grasp on the way things were, like he’d thought he had.

  Maybe he hadn’t wanted to, really, because the truth was too hard to bear.

  Whatever.

  Things were different now. Things had officially gone to hell in a handbasket, and his friends were in danger. James was being reckless with a powerful enemy, and Delia was courting that enemy’s friendship.

  Sam didn’t care if this spell was bullshit.

  He needed to know what was coming—in case he needed to stop it.

  He grabbed a hand mirror from his parents’ bedroom. He filled his bathtub all the way up to the rim, then placed the hand mirror faceup on the bottom, so that it reflected the ceiling at weird angles. He grabbed his tarot deck, painfully aware that it was a gift from Delia that he didn’t use very much, and then shuff
led it and placed it on the ledge of the tub. He rooted around in his closet until he found the Y-shaped copper wire he used even less often than the tarot cards—a dowsing rod he’d made for freshman-year convention, when his category challenge was to find a way to detect and eliminate toxins from drinking water. Finally, he lit a stick of sandalwood incense, not expressly required by the spell but always helpful for this very intense, introspective magic.

  All his implements gathered, Sam sat down on the bathroom floor, facing the tub, and read carefully through the steps of the spell one more time.

  It was the kind of spell where it seemed like it would help to have four hands and as many eyes. He was supposed to do a three-card spread from the deck, at the same time that he was supposed to read the incantation, channel energy into the dowsing rod, and keep a “passive eye” on the mirror, whatever that meant.

  It was a dexterity challenge as much as a magical one.

  Sam gave himself a mental on your mark, get set, go, then flipped the top three cards—flip, flip, flip. Three of Cups, Seven of Swords, Death.

  Party, theft, death.

  He read the incantation, a series of nonsense syllables the writer claimed was a mix of languages, whose roots and meanings went unexplained.

  He gripped the two arms of the dowsing rod, feeling it guide him left—no, right—no, left—well, sort of left, yes, there.

  And though he kept his face forward, following the guidelines of the spell, he left his peripheral vision open to the mirror, feeling a little silly because of course it was still just reflecting the ceiling, at slightly different—

  Wait.

  He snapped his head to stare at the mirror, but there was nothing there when he looked right at it. Instead, he felt the dowsing rod tugging him, left—no, right—no, left again, until he was facing the same direction—until he was sure he saw the same thing in the corner of his eye.

  It was glass against water, which made it confusing, but it wasn’t the mirror in the tub—it was something else. Somewhere else. It was a building, familiar. It made Sam think of the Savannah Convention Center, but only if you were somehow standing at the bottom of the Savannah River and looking up at it through the water. He couldn’t say why that’s where his mind went, but the inclination was as strong and real as the tug of the dowsing rod.