From Bad to Cursed

  “We protect your dwelling with our blood and our lives,” Lydia said. And every voice in the room repeated: “We protect your dwelling with our blood and our lives.”

  “As you all know,” Lydia said, “for the past several weeks, we’ve had the privilege of being part of the Sunshine Club. With Aralt’s blessing, we were all able to improve ourselves and become more beautiful, popular, successful, and smart. We’ve taken what he offered and made the most of it, and now it’s time to make a real change. To dedicate our lives to a cause bigger than our little group.”

  Like curing diseases. Negotiating peace treaties. Creating art.

  “Tonight…we graduate.”

  Applause.

  I sat back in my chair and looked around while Lydia continued her speech.

  We all looked overdressed in the Smalls’ dank, dingy basement. The room was about twenty by thirty feet. The poured concrete floor had crumbled with age, and the ceiling was so low that it seemed to push down on us, stifling the air in the room. The stairs that led down from the creaking hallway were hardly more than a glorified ladder.

  One side of the room was completely filled with piles of boxes, leaving the rest open. A long snack table was set up under a wide, low window, but no one had touched a bite of food.

  It was for afterward, for the celebration.

  The Sunshine Club occupied a circle of folding chairs. Every girl was perfectly coiffed and made-up, every dress perfectly pressed.

  In the center was a makeshift podium.

  Kasey had sat down a few chairs away from me. Like everyone else, she was brimming with excitement. Why shouldn’t we be? After tonight, we would begin leading the kind of lives most people can only dream of. Money. Success. Fame. Anything we wanted, basically.

  Zoe, for her part, had never looked as radiant as she did sitting there, practically overflowing with her secret. Her eyes glowed with affection as she glanced around the room. There was also a tinge of self-satisfaction. Almost smugness.

  She really was happy to do it, just like Farrin had said someone would be.

  Lydia reached down and opened the book.

  “And now,” she said, “we begin. Alexis, would you do the honor?”

  This distinction—letting me be the one to lead the spell—was Lydia’s idea. She’d been so thrilled by my renewed devotion that she suggested it immediately.

  I walked over to the book and gazed around the room at the happy faces looking back at me.

  Forget Elspeth. If someone was holding out a lottery ticket to you, you’d take it, wouldn’t you? Not taking it would make you a fool, wouldn’t it?

  This could be the best thing that ever happened to me.

  The best thing that ever happened to me.

  Where had I heard that before?

  It was what Farrin had said to me.

  And I believed it.

  But not because I’d thought about it—only because she’d made me believe it. She’d manipulated me the way I manipulated everyone around me. She probably did it without thinking. Like reading lines out of a play.

  Was she ever real? Did she ever get to choose for herself? Or was it always about the right thing according to Aralt? The right thing to further the aims of her friends? Was she free?

  Or was she only as free as Aralt let her be?

  I looked back down at the spell and opened my mouth. Then I closed the book.

  Disappointed sighs rose around the room like bubbles in a fish tank. Lydia was on the verge of leaping out of her chair.

  “I…just wanted to tell you,” I said, “how much I care about you all. And how great it’s been…being your sister.”

  Everyone muttered polite replies. You could tell they all hoped I’d just get on with it.

  But I couldn’t get on with it. I’d made up my mind—my own mind, for once. The other girls might tear me to pieces and go on without me. But as far as my part in it was concerned, I knew I could never bow down to Aralt.

  I’d once thought I’d choose death over a life without Aralt.

  But now a life with him felt like death anyway.

  I opened the book again. Lydia sat up straight. “I marked the page,” she said.

  I expected to see TUGANN SIBH at the top of the page. But the one Lydia had marked was different. It said TOGHRAIONN SIBH.

  The names were similar, and the book was full of spells. It would be easy to mix them up.

  I glanced at Lydia. “Are you sure this is the one?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I triple-checked it.”

  If Tugann meant “we give,” what did Toghraionn mean?

  Either Farrin was wrong or Lydia was wrong.

  All of this flashed through my head in the space of about two seconds.

  I glanced up at Lydia. At her red dress.

  No.

  At Tashi’s red dress—the dress Lydia had taken from her closet after she’d killed her and taken the book and slid the ring off her dead finger.

  After she murdered her.

  My eyes brushed across the room, and then I looked down at the book.

  TOGHRAIONN SIBH was on the right page.

  There was another spell on the left.

  TRÉIGANN SIBH.

  The words were underlined with a violent slash of dark gray, obviously made by someone in a rush.

  Someone like Tashi.

  What Tashi had said to me, whispered frantically when she knew some great danger was approaching: To abandon…try again.

  And what Elspeth had spelled out on the Ouija board: try again.

  Not “try again.”

  Tréigann.

  The abandoning spell.

  It was the spell we needed—and if Tashi had to entrust it to someone who could resist Aralt, that meant that Aralt wouldn’t be happy about the results. Aralt wanted the giving spell, because he wanted someone’s life energy.

  So maybe the abandoning spell would rid us of Aralt—without anyone dying.

  The only question was…what on earth was Lydia trying to get us to do?

  TRÉIGANN SIBH. We abandon.

  At the moment, I trusted the advice of two dead women more than I trusted anyone else. Including myself.

  So I read the abandoning spell, line by line. And the girls in the room recited it after me.

  Halfway through, I felt a sharp pain in my side, like a stomach cramp. But I kept reading. And if anyone else felt anything, they ignored it too. There was no reason to suspect that a few small jabs of pain were something that shouldn’t be expected, endured. Anything could be endured for Aralt.

  None of them knew the truth—that with every word, they were pushing him out of themselves, back into his book.

  When I was finished, I closed the book and heaved a shaky sigh. My legs began to ache as if I’d just run a marathon. Around the room, I could tell that other girls were feeling it too. They rubbed their foreheads and stretched their necks from side to side.

  Lydia, on the other hand, looked fine.

  And that’s when it hit me: she hadn’t followed along when I read the spell. She’d sat silently, unmoving.

  She didn’t know I’d read the wrong spell. She would have reacted.

  So what was she doing?

  “Now…we have one more task ahead of us,” I said, and my voice caught in my throat. I coughed convulsively a couple of times before forcing myself to stand up straight.

  Everyone tried to smile, but they were feeling pretty bad. Zoe smoothed her skirt. But before she could take a step toward the center of the circle, Kasey was on her feet next to me.

  “I want to do it,” Kasey said. “I want to be the gift for Aralt. Please. Let me.”

  Zoe looked exactly how I felt—like she’d been body-slammed.

  I stared down at my sister’s unblinking blue eyes, the pupils as big around as pencil erasers.

  “Kasey,” I said. It was just shock. But she thought I was arguing with her.

  “Please, Lexi,” she said. “Let m
e be the gift.”

  Lydia watched us, uneasy curiosity on her face.

  So, because it had to look like things were going as planned, I numbly pointed to Tréigann. And Kasey read it again.

  I prayed that I’d made the right choice, that reading this spell twice didn’t do something horrible to you. Maybe trusting Tashi and Elspeth had been foolish.

  When she finished, the room was silent. “Okay,” I said, my fingers scrabbling with the pages. I hadn’t really thought past this part of the plan. I guess I’d been hoping there would be a big epiphany moment, everyone rubbing their eyes and saying, “What was that all about?”

  Nope.

  “I have to sign, right?” Kasey asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “We should go…be alone.”

  No one said anything, because everyone thought she was dying. They’d just sit there in their folding chairs with their manicured hands in their laps and wait while my sister died. Or would they get started on the snack table? Was Kasey supposed to go somewhere else and lie down and expire peacefully and not ruin our party?

  Lydia’s voice cut through the room like a hot knife through butter. “There’s a little room around the corner.”

  She meant the dark room they’d held me in earlier. I gave her a hard look. “Kasey deserves to be comfortable.”

  My sister’s nerves started to fail her. “I think I’d rather go upstairs,” she said, her voice trembling. “I think I want to be in private.”

  “Fine,” Lydia said. “We’ll go upstairs.”

  “No, just me and Lexi,” Kasey whispered.

  A few feet away, Mimi started fanning herself.

  “I feel sick,” Kendra complained.

  “Don’t worry,” Lydia said. She got up and looked around the room, searching the dark spaces, as if she was waiting for something. When she spoke, she sounded distracted. “It’ll only be for a minute.”

  Kasey dragged herself up the steps, and I came behind her, holding the book.

  She looked paler, thinner, somehow. “Should I lie down?” she whispered.

  I knew she hadn’t read the giving spell, but my skin broke out in goosebumps. She’d meant to. She’d wanted to. She’d tried to sacrifice herself.

  “Sit on the couch in the front room,” I said. The closer to the exit, the better. “I’ll get a pen.”

  She shuffled away while I eased back toward the base- ment door. There was an old, loose doorknob that shifted around under your hand when you touched it, and a small metal hook that fit into a loop on the frame. I gently pressed the button lock on the knob; as I’d guessed, it jiggled uselessly. Then I slid the hook in the loop and slowly shifted one of the kitchen chairs under the knob.

  I went back to the living room, where Kasey was laid out like a fainting victim.

  “I don’t feel good,” she whispered.

  Neither did I. “Come on, Kase, get up.”

  She sat up. “Where’s the pen?”

  “There is no pen,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

  Her jaw dropped. “But I—”

  “You’re not dying. That was a different spell. I think Aralt is back in the book, and now I need to destroy it. You have to come with me, because they’ll think you were in on it.”

  “Oh, Lexi!” she said, her face falling. “How could you?”

  The only thing worse than the sheer absurdity of the question was the fact that she really was disappointed that she wasn’t going to die.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said. “I’m going to go see if there are any car keys sitting around. You wait here.”

  She slumped over, utterly forlorn.

  I went back to the kitchen and looked for stray purses. Aha! Megan’s was nestled in the corner of the counter. I dug through it, but couldn’t find the keys.

  From behind me came a jingling sound. “Looking for these?”

  I turned to see Megan standing in the doorway.

  “I believed you, Lex. I stood up for you.” She shook her head. “Even when you excluded me, abandoned me for your boyfriend or your sister…I was always ready to be there for you. And this is how you repay me?”

  Then she drew her hand from behind her back to reveal a kitchen knife. Not some dollar-store apple peeler, but a big, fat one from the days when the Smalls had a fully stocked gourmet kitchen.

  “Seriously,” she said. “I’m so disappointed.”

  She lunged at me, but the separation from Aralt was slowing her down, dulling her reflexes. I dodged out of the way, and the knife just barely nicked my arm. I forced myself to ignore the sting and ran around the other side of the table.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “It’s over. If you stop to think about it—”

  “I don’t want to stop to think!” she said. “I want to teach you what it means to be loyal to Aralt. And the price you pay for betraying him. Betraying me, Alexis.”

  From the living room came my sister’s timid voice. “Lexi? What’s going on?”

  Megan froze. “Or maybe your sister can be the gift after all.”

  Knife raised, she spun around and headed toward Kasey.

  From the end of the hallway, the doorknob rattled. “Hey!” Lydia yelled. “What are you doing up there?”

  I grabbed the first thing I could find, a heavy metal kitchen stool, and ran after Megan. She was waiting for me, a few feet from my sister.

  “Oh, you found a chair!” Megan said, her voice mocking. “I’m so scared. What are you going to do, sit on me? Or are you going to kill me? I mean, you couldn’t kill your family, but I’m just your best friend. I hardly even count.”

  She lunged toward Kasey, who tried to dash away—but Megan’s knife grazed her leg.

  My sister yelped in pain and limped backward as Megan steadied herself for another charge.

  I didn’t stop to think. I swung the chair low, like a croquet mallet. It hit Megan’s left knee with a sickening crunch. She screamed and fell sideways, grabbing her leg as she hit the ground and curled into a ball.

  Kasey, snapped out of her self-pity spiral by the sight of someone coming at her with a knife, was on her feet, halfway to the front door.

  There was banging from the basement, then a more concentrated rattle. They were trying to get out—and it probably wouldn’t take them long.

  I scooped up the book and followed Kasey to the front yard. It was dark out; I’d been unconscious in the basement for almost an entire day. My sister could hardly even walk on her injured leg.

  “Go on without me,” she said. “I can hide in the bushes.”

  “If they find you, they’ll kill you,” I said.

  “They won’t find me,” she said. “Now run!”

  I was about to protest, to try to figure out something safer, but then I looked at the shrubs. Kasey was right. They were so wild and untended that nobody would ever see her. She was already hobbling toward them.

  I took a split second to look around, kicked off Mrs. Wiley’s shoes, and ran.

  Like my life depended on it.

  Which it did.

  THE ROUGH PAVEMENT tore at my bare feet as I sprinted away from the house.

  From behind me, I heard my name: “Alexis!”

  I wasted a fraction of a second looking over my shoulder.

  Lydia was chasing me. She was out of breath, but she was moving fast, catching up. She hadn’t read the spell with us; she could still draw speed and strength from Aralt’s energy. Meanwhile, thanks to the abandoning spell, I was growing weaker by the moment.

  “Come back!” she screeched.

  Two blocks later, I felt like I might pass out, but I forced myself to keep going. Lydia was so close I could hear her footsteps slapping the sidewalk. I turned onto a side road and ended up running toward the back of a mini-mall, through a parking lot that was littered with broken bottles glinting in the moonlight. The glass gouged the soles of my feet as I crossed it.

  I leaped over a deep pothole; a second later, Lydia screamed, and I lo
oked back to see her on the ground, holding her ankle. She climbed to her feet and ran toward me with a dragging, unbalanced stride.

  One of the doors to a store had glass windowpanes; I scooped up a chunk of asphalt and busted it through the glass, clearing enough room to slip my hand through and unlock the door.

  I was closing it behind me when Lydia hurled herself at it, knocking me backward into the room. The book went flying from my hands. Lydia tumbled inside right after me.

  While she flailed, I picked up the book and ran for the front of the store.

  But the front door was bolted. And outside of that was a locked metal gate. i was trapped.

  I glanced around the place I’d chosen to escape to: a beauty parlor. In the front window was a neon sign—the name of the salon. Glancing at one of the mirrors, I read: JUST TEASING.

  No Just Teasing, Elspeth had said.

  For a moment, the air got heavy around me.

  Something horrible was going to happen here. Elspeth had done her best to warn us, but we’d totally ignored her.

  Lydia was having trouble getting to her feet—her ankle seemed to be causing her a lot of pain. She hauled herself off the floor and limped toward me. “Aw, what’s the matter?” she asked. “Did you forget you’re in the ghetto, Alexis? We have bars on our windows here.”

  I needed something to start a fire with. I saw the open bathroom door at the back of the long room and sprinted past Lydia, who pawed madly at me and lost her balance again, falling onto one of the swivel chairs.

  There were matches on the counter, next to an incense burner with a stick of incense in it.

  Now all I needed was fuel.

  Just outside the bathroom was a supply cabinet. I threw open the doors, looking for flammable hair products, aware that Lydia was dragging her way toward me, grunting and howling like Frankenstein’s monster.

  I emptied a bottle of hairspray over the book. The fluid spilled out, soaking the leather cover. I flipped through the pages, trying to cover as much of the surface as I could.

  I pulled a match from the box.

  “Leave it alone,” Lydia said, her voice low and gravelly and dead serious. “Or you won’t leave this place alive.”

  I turned around, holding the book in my arms.

  “You lied,” I said. “That wasn’t the right spell. What were you trying to do, Lydia?”