If Sam and James couldn’t see how much it had hurt her to be so consistently forgotten, what did she owe them anyway, in the face of this new opportunity? This new group, who hadn’t ended up with Delia by an accident of geography, but had picked her, quite intentionally, because of what she could do?
Practicing with Isaac and the others felt nothing like practicing with the Fascinators. Delia didn’t have to teach these people anything. For once, Delia got to be the learner.
The leaders of the group, Grace and Mr. Grender, seriously knew their stuff, and they were pushing the boundaries of magic, especially Grace. She never spoke, which Delia had finally brought herself to ask Isaac about, and Isaac had said that this was a matter of choice. That she had other, magical ways of communicating. Even that seemed badass to Delia—someone who was so magical, she didn’t even have to speak.
It had felt a little weird at first, showing up at the dilapidated warehouse she’d given James so much shit for visiting, then sitting in a room that looked like an office from the seventies doing group spells with a bunch of adults. Another guy, Hank, joined the group only a little after she did, and he looked like he must have been thirty or so.
But she was eighteen-going-on-thirty herself, and besides, Isaac was practically her age.
And after the second time meeting with them, the physical space felt irrelevant anyway, as it always did when you were lost in the magic. Existing out of space and time, thinking of incantations and associations while you were waitressing tables, while you were staring out the window during calc, while you were walking through the halls of Friedman High School, not seeing all the faces of the people who didn’t get it.
It had been a little tempting, really, when Isaac had mentioned the open room. When he’d said that the girl who’d lived there before had gone totally crazy—had left them with her rent to pay on not even a day’s notice, and Grace had told Isaac specifically that Delia seemed like she’d fit right in with the group . . .
No way would her parents allow that, though. They were hands-off, but they weren’t that hands-off.
Today it was chilly, mid-October. Mr. Grender was getting frustrated because the spell he most wanted to work on—the spell that they’d attempted that night with James, the one that would open the door to the spirit world—required the magic of a lot of people. Isaac had explained it was like a pulley system, person to person, and while seven was something of a magic number for most group spells, for spells like this one, a bigger pulley was required.
“Why can’t we just throw another party?” said one of the Alexes.
“Yeah. It’s seriously starting to get lonely around here,” said the other. “All this space and no one to fill it with.”
“You know why we can’t throw another party,” Isaac said. “Keepers have been sniffing around ever since Carl lost it and started sending out distress calls. We need to lie low for a little while, until they accept that he’s nothing more than a bitter alcoholic and move on.”
That was another thing that had been weird at first—hearing the way these people talked about Keepers, when for years now, Delia had had her sights on becoming one. To hear them tell it, Keepers weren’t called Keepers because they possessed the most magic; or at least, that wasn’t the only reason. They were the Keepers because they kept the rest of the world’s magic in check; they made sure they possessed the most magic by putting a cap on everyone else’s.
“Do the other magickers have to participate for the spell to work?” That was Hank. He seemed normal enough. A little quiet, maybe. A little on the thin side, and he always wore the same red plaid shirt. He lived in Carl’s old room.
“What do you mean?” Isaac said. “Of course they have to be there for the spell to work.”
“But do they have to participate?” Hank repeated. “Willingly, I mean. Or is it enough for them to be present?”
Grace and Mr. Grender exchanged a look.
“Technically, no,” Mr. Grender said. “It’s not enough. Being in the presence of other strong magickers does make your magic stronger, sure. It has a cumulative effect like that. But the spell . . . well, it takes something out of you. It’s like giving blood. Nothing you don’t get back, mind you,” he rushed to add, perhaps in response to the look of shock that Delia, Alex, and Alex shared. Isaac seemed to have heard this already, and Hank didn’t seem to be unsettled by anything. “That’s why we always ask for volunteers at the parties. We don’t want anybody giving anything unwillingly.”
“What does it matter, if they get it back anyway?” Hank said, as calmly as if he were asking about the weather.
“It’s a moot point,” Isaac said. “You’re never going to find a room full of strong enough magickers who would also sit there and let you finish the spell. Either you invite them to help, or you don’t get them together at all.”
“Really?” Hank said. “You can’t think of a single place where a group of magickers might fit the bill?”
Later, Delia would think back on this moment and wonder what had motivated her exactly. If it was some need to prove herself useful to this new group of powerful magickers, whom she desperately wanted to impress. Or maybe she’d just gotten caught up in the brainstorming, like an improv game that demanded jokes faster than you could process them. Or did she already know, on some level, that this was a spell that had the power to undo, and was she motivated, even a little bit, by the desire to undo the greatest symbol of her best friends’ shared goals?
“There is,” she said, “always the state magic convention. It happens in a few weeks in Savannah. There are tons of magickers there.”
The seven of them had exchanged looks around the table. This was the opposite of what it normally felt like, offering suggestions as club president. Here, Delia was the lowliest member, the unproven initiate. It felt like a lot was hanging in the balance of their response.
Mr. Grender said, “It could work.”
And they started to plan.
Chapter 19
SAVANNAH WAS THE OLDEST CITY IN GEORGIA, AND, depending on your definition, it was the most magical, too. If you defined a city’s magic in terms of its population in the aggregate, Atlanta would probably have it beat. If you counted in terms of magic per capita, Savannah, with its density of old-money families in ancestral homes, had the edge.
And if you were thinking instead of the magic built into the bones of the city itself—if you were the kind of person who believed in an afterlife, where the magic of the departed lingered on just out of sight—then there was no contest.
Whatever you believed, however you counted, there was no denying that here in Savannah, all your spells were a whisper more powerful. Your associations came more easily. The effects lasted longer.
Which was why every year, bewildered high schoolers at the state magic convention found themselves performing feats of which they did not think themselves capable.
Like Sam, for example. Who knew that he could pull off the high-level feat of self-delusion it took to walk into the Savannah Convention Center for perhaps the last time ever with only one other member of his magic club, acting like everything was going to be okay?
“Hey, you all right?” Denver said, catching the nauseated look on Sam’s face.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine. I’m great.”
“Boys! Sam and Denver! Over here.”
It was their perpetually frazzled but always still-smiling sponsor and chaperone, Ms. Berry, wearing a purple pantsuit and a giant dragonfly brooch.
“I picked up our registration packet at the sponsor meeting,” she said. “Here are your name tags and category room assignments, plus a map for you, Denver, and . . . Where’s the rest of the team?”
“They got a late start at the continental breakfast. We figured we’d head over and let them catch up.”
“Well, they’d better get here in the next ten minutes. James has one of the first times in the Lunar Tides Challenge. He does realize that, right?”
> Sam shrugged.
“Honestly, I’m happy to support you all really going for it this year, but this is exactly the kind of logistical headache I was hoping to avoid when I convinced the school to book us the hotel rooms.”
He may have been imagining it, but Sam thought she was looking at him in a particular way when she said that last bit. Probably because in the end, Denver’s grand fundraising dreams for their club had turned into Sam going into Ms. Berry’s office and asking her to please beg the school for more money, because with two more members, at least one of whom was possibly dating an existing member, there was no way they could all fit on a family couch and an air mattress. It still wasn’t clear how much of the four hotel rooms had been paid for by the school district and how much had been paid by Ms. Berry as a graduation gift. It was clear she wanted them to place in the overall category as much as they did, if not more.
“I’m sure they’ll be here soon,” Denver said. “Come on, Sam. Let’s go find our first rooms.”
The convention center was an absolute madhouse, as it always was—a mix of a few familiar faces Sam recognized from the categories and podiums of previous years, but far more so, a sea of excited young magickers he didn’t know. He remembered being a freshman in this exact same hallway, looking around in awe, wondering what it would feel like to be one of the cool in-the-know seniors who had it all figured out, and not some bumpkin also-ran.
Now that he was actually here, Sam had to face the fact that the ability to figure things out—to feel in control, to take decisive action—wasn’t one that simply came with age. Possibly, it was an ability that Sam just didn’t have and never would. You could take the boy out of Friedman . . .
“At the Tennessee convention, your time slots were determined by your school’s rank from the year before. If your team came in last place the year before, you had to go first, and the first-place school got to sleep in. In theory, that meant the competitors in each category got better and better as the day went on, but it also meant that the expectations got more intense. Defending champions got dethroned left and right because somebody choked under the pressure of going last.”
“I can relate to the choking under pressure part,” Sam said. “Not so much the expectations.”
“Oh, I totally expect you to do well in both your categories today. You’ve been amazing at practice.”
It was true, this past month Sam had come closer to mastering Illusions of Grandeur, his original category, than he had in the whole last year of practices with James and Delia. Even in his second category, the Pit and the Pendulum, which he’d picked up relatively last minute, he’d made enough progress that he wasn’t afraid of embarrassing himself today. It was something about the energy when it was him and Denver alone. It was like, now that he wasn’t the worst of his practice group, he couldn’t fall back on that as an excuse for not trying harder than his hardest. And okay, maybe he was partly motivated by a desire to show Delia what she was missing—that they weren’t powerless nobodies, dragging her down.
But he was equally motivated by the fear that he needed to be ready when his prediction came true.
Because after all this time, he still hadn’t figured out what True Light might be planning that would result in the prediction he saw, let alone found a way to stop it. A few times he’d thought about going through Emma to reach out to that girl from Q-Atl, Liv, but it had seemed so clear that day that she was ready to put True Light behind her; Sam didn’t want to re-traumatize her on a hunch.
That fear extended to Delia, too. He refused to believe that she was complicit in whatever True Light was up to, but all these weeks later, she still hadn’t apologized to Sam and he still hadn’t apologized to her. They were barely speaking at all, to the point where it had been impossible to miss during the convention logistics meeting last week, causing Ms. Berry to ask what was up with them anyway (answer: “nothing”).
Sam almost hoped something would happen this weekend, if only so that he knew where he stood with his friends. All this waiting around, reading between the lines of their Friendivist and v-clip posts, and feeling hurt by everyone could have been enough to warrant the Death card on its own.
“I think this is your first room,” Denver said, stopping at room 106. “I’m upstairs in the morning, and then it looks like we’re both in exhibit hall A this afternoon. Maybe whoever’s done first can text the other one and we’ll meet at the entrance to go find lunch?”
“Sure, yeah, I like that plan.”
“Oh my gosh, you sound so nervous. I didn’t peg you for the stage fright type.”
“I’d say what I’m feeling goes a little beyond stage fright.”
“Well, I won’t tell you how to feel. But all I will say is, this fight between you, James, and Delia? Winning your categories won’t make it go away.”
“This is supposed to make me feel less anxious?”
“I mean, yeah. Whether you win or totally bomb in there, you are deserving of their friendship, and if they can’t see that, that’s on them. It’s not all on you to suddenly have to change who you are and be a better person. That’s not how friendship works.”
Sam couldn’t find the words of a reply right then. He was afraid if he spoke he would just start crying. But he smiled and gave Denver a very awkward shoulder pat, which would have to do. And then he headed into the room to show off his illusions.
Denver’s encouraging words ended up being their own prophecy of a kind. Sam didn’t totally bomb, but in his humble opinion, he clearly didn’t win either, especially with that kid from Clayton County putting on a master class of a fireworks show, which wasn’t fair at all, since the guy also looked like an all-American athlete, with cheekbones chiseled from stone. You were supposed to get one or the other, but not both.
When the thirty magickers competing in Illusions of Grandeur all finished up, Sam had no new messages from Denver, which meant the Temporal Magic category was somehow taking even longer. As he exited the room back into the sunlit hallway, typing out a text to say he was heading to the entrance now, Sam was so preoccupied with his phone that he walked face-first into someone without realizing it, and only saw when they both took a step back in a mutual flurry of curses and apologies that it was Amber.
“Oh! Amber! Hi!” he said, his voice shooting up into a register that should not have been detectable to the human ear.
“Sam! How are you? All finished? How did it go? This was illusions, right? How did it go?”
At the same time, they both seemed to realize how ridiculous they sounded, and mercifully, they both took a deep breath and managed to laugh it off.
“Illusions, yeah,” Sam said more calmly. “It went okay. Not great, but okay.”
“It can’t have been worse than me at Elements of Empathy,” Amber said. “When it got to the part where I was supposed to detect how the judges were feeling behind a closed curtain, I guessed disappointed, and that’s one of the few I actually got right.”
“The first convention’s the hardest. The nerves are killer.”
“Right? I never get nervous playing soccer, and we’ve made the playoffs before. I guess the difference is that soccer’s a team sport. If I’m ever having an off day, I know my teammates can step in and pick up the slack.”
“That must be nice.”
“Yeah.”
“So, listen, I was about to go meet Denver for lunch, so . . . Good luck this afternoon, I guess? No wait, sorry, you only had the one category, duh. So, if you’re going to watch James or Delia, I guess wish them good luck?”
“Sam.”
“Hm?”
“This doesn’t feel good, does it?”
“What doesn’t?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Oh. That.”
“I know it’s not really my place, because I’m new to the group and I don’t know all the history and stuff, but you know what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“I thin
k James really needs you right now. He’s just too proud to say it.”
“Come again?”
“I know he hasn’t told you this for some bizarre reason that I can only assume is because boys are dumb sometimes, but I first heard it at church, when we were all told to pray for him, and . . . Anyway, his dad actually lost his job, and things have been pretty rocky at home for him ever since.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam said, trying to keep up the stoic act, though this news really did come as a surprise to him. “Since when?”
“Since July.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. And apparently, it was after he hit on some woman whose roof he was working on, so he hasn’t been eligible for unemployment. He’s been working odd jobs here and there, and James has been helping him out, but without the company’s clients, it has been really tough. I think your opinion means a lot to James, and he doesn’t want you to think less of him.”
“Think less of him? Because his dad got fired for harassment?”
“I mean, no offense, Sam, but even the way you just said that sort of proves him right.”
“Wow. Okay, sorry, it’s just a lot to take in, especially since it’s not even coming from James.”
“I get the sense he wanted to wait to tell you in case things turned around. The way things stand right now, it’s not looking good for him going to college at all next year, let alone sticking to your roommate plan. He doesn’t want to leave Benji home alone until he knows there’s a steady income. And his mom’s been talking about finding work, but . . .” She shrugged.
“Well, don’t I feel like an asshole now,” Sam said.
The Fascinators Page 19