“I think it was the Chordettes,” said Daisy.
“It was not the Chordettes,” said Jing. “So, we’re all wincing and cussing, and the lights cut out. All of them. But it wasn’t the power, because the music kept playing and there was light under the door upstairs.”
“You could only see people’s hands. The broken glow bracelets, you know? It was wicked cool. Hands down, best scare party ever. I can’t wait until next weekend. Costumes won’t be tacky by then.” Daisy, impervious to Jing’s acid glare, looked monstrously pleased with herself. “The chalk drawings glowed, too. It was spooky as hell. I’m sure that Austin Grass pissed himself, he was so scared. Serves the bastard right for dumping Alexis like that.”
“I filmed it.” Jing flared her nostrils. Last night’s mascara had flaked under her eyes, and the smudges reminded me of kiddy skeleton face paint. She pursed her lips. “People are still posting about it. It’s a pretty big deal. Speculation abounds. You’d be surprised how many people are trying to write it off as some trick you learned in Drama, Sideways. As if the ragtag Drama Club could pull off a stunt like this.”
“Watch it. That’s my ragtag Drama Club you’re talking about,” I grumbled into the back of my wrist. The Sycamore Gorge West High Drama Club was the most the school had to offer, thanks. I loved it even if it was shitty and poorly directed and none of the folks involved were talking to me anymore. I scratched the back of my neck and took a step closer to the wall. A chalk drawing comprised of Vs and Cs loomed inches from my nose. Lines drawn on thick. Angles sharp. Curves heavy. “Holy hell. This is my handwriting.”
“Yeah. I figured.” Jing crossed her arms. “Explain how the hell you did it.”
“I don’t know.” A smile broke over my face. My heartbeat rammed faster. I reached out and brushed the marks with my fingertips, brushed them as softly as I might stroke a cat. The swirling line work felt cool against my fingertips. Lovely, delicate lines, tangled and stretched tight atop the bricks. “God, this is so cool. I did this. I am so cool.”
“Right,” said Daisy.
“Look. Sideways.” Jing struck a pose like she was praying: fingertips pressed together, palms parallel, expression hard as the walls or the floor. Her voice was sweet and buttery. “When I invited you to do your witch thing, I was expecting something small. I was going to let you wiggle your fingers and say something rhymey and weird. Hell. I thought it wouldn’t work, but you’re creepy and I figured just having you here would put people in the Halloween mood. This. I was not expecting all of this.”
“Is that your way of saying that I’m banned from your house parties?” I leaned against the wall, shoulder to my accidental masterpiece. The stupid, giddy grin was here to stay. My face kind of hurt from smiling this hard. Good.
Jing looked me in the face, her gaze lasering through my skull. She grinned with teeth. “Are you kidding? I nearly got my scare party trending, and it’s only the third. Everyone is talking about it. Conversation Monday morning will be strictly about the baddest haunted house ever.”
I cocked a brow. “You’re giving me whiplash, Jing.”
“Look. I’m pissed because there’s chalk all over my goddamn basement. You’re staying the night and helping me clean up. My parents come home on Tuesday, and it needs to be spotless by then. I’m not pissed because of the magic. I just want to know how you did it. I want in.”
My mind flashed to Madeline again. My smile slipped a little. If the casting worked, then what had happened with Madeline? I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared at my shoes. There was a crumpled leaf stuck in the laces. The gap from midnight ’til now was starting to leave a strange taste in my mouth. “Did you see Madeline, by any chance?”
“Madeline? Like, the extra chick on the circle? No.” Jing snaked her hand through her hair. “Why?”
“She wanted to see how it worked, too. She dragged me upstairs and we sat on the deck, and she was insistent about it. Not that I minded. I like showing off. Something struck me when we were out there, and I felt this sort of zinging queasiness, the sort that always comes with magic. So, I maybe recklessly jumped into it. It was a huge rush, but I blamed the alcohol for that. I didn’t think about it. I mean, it shouldn’t have worked. I drew a five-pointed circle, and Yates broke the circle, so the spell should have died. I don’t know how the two of us could have done all this. I really don’t remember.” I jammed my tongue in my cheek. I tried to rewind the tapes in my head, but it was like there wasn’t a gap at all. Inhale at midnight, exhale at noon.
“We found you on the deck. Just you, though. Madeline must have left,” Jing said.
“Do you have her number?”
Daisy yowled and clapped her hands.
“Not like that.” I rolled my eyes so hard that they nearly fell out of my head. “I’m just saying that she might know what happened. I’m plenty curious myself, believe it or not.”
Admittedly, the Daisy line of thought was also appealing. A significant part of me wanted to buy Madeline coffee. All the coffee in the damned world. Even if she had left me on a freezing deck. Wait. Maybe not, then. Goddamn it. I clawed the hair off my forehead and cringed at how stringy it felt.
“I don’t. I barely know her. She came with someone else.” Jing stood beside me and rocked back against the wall. Her hair, tousled and bleached, fell in a jagged fringe across her forehead, and the way it frayed around her collarbone was the stuff of daydreams. If she told me that she’d spent the morning at the beach, I’d have believed her.
“Random,” I said mostly to myself, “but your hair looks mega-kickass. Thought you should know.” I scuffed the sole of my boot across the cement. “When I do the messy hair thing, I look like a junkie.”
“Thanks,” said Jing. She blinked, and something like a smile twitched on her cheeks. “And you always look like a junkie. It just kind of works on you.”
Right. I took a cursory scan of the room and cleared my throat. “I have no idea what any of these lines mean. Like, any of them. It makes zero sense.”
“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but what did the actual spell do? Like, what were you trying to do when we were all holding hands?” Daisy was sizing up the St. Sebastian heart doodle. “Because I’ve seen The Craft like six times, and they never drew hearts on stuff.”
“I don’t really know what I was trying to do. I just kind of did it. I don’t normally draw hearts and shit, but it doesn’t matter so much what you draw, so long as you believe it. I mean, there’s got to be a circle, but you can scribble like a five-year-old with lipstick on a wall, and it’ll still work as long as your incantation doesn’t suck.”
Actually, no. It barely ever works, and when it does, it can usually be debunked by killjoy skeptics on the internet, and that’s when I’m following spell book advice to the letter. This was absurd. I didn’t draw any of these on purpose, so there wasn’t any intention to drive them. And it wasn’t like I had a hell of a lot of intention in the first place. I was trying to make the lights flicker. Something simple, flashy, manageable. These sigils shouldn’t have been capable of this.