Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,23

that she might be able to erase the nickname, but now her voice quavered as she spoke, and worse, Jess didn’t believe her.

“I hardly ever speak to you,” Jess said, “and I’ve never told you about Gran Marie. I’ve never told anyone at school what she said about me being good at art. So how could you know that?”

Isis lifted her paper up in front of her face, desperately staring at the writing. What now?

“We have to do the vocab,” she said. Maybe Jess would get bored, maybe she’d go away? “Jouer a football.”

But a familiar smell of damp was building. A fibrous, sooty dew blackened the spare chair at their table, condensing into Mandeville.

“How are we proceeding?” he asked, nodding at Jess.

Jess pulled Isis’s paper down. “Please, can’t you talk to Gran Marie again?” Her lower lip was sore and red where she’d been biting it.

“I wonder what this spiteful young person could want?” asked Mandeville, leaning in close to Isis. “To gain access to her grandmother’s inheritance? Or find out a nasty secret?”

“Mum and Dad never listen to me,” said Jess, “and I used to talk to Gran Marie about everything.” Tears gleamed in Jess’s eyes, her chin wobbled.

Mandeville clapped his hands, the bones of his long fingers clattering together.

“A miracle is performed! The bully becomes a kinder, better person.” He pressed a bony cold hand onto Isis’s. “This is the power of the medium, my dear. This is the good work you are turning your back on. You think being a psychic is about the dead, but it is all for the living.”

Isis pulled her hand away, shuddering at the cold. Jess must have felt the chill too, because she rubbed her arms. Then she stopped, her eyes widening.

“I read on the internet – spirits and ghosts are freezing cold, aren’t they?”

Isis opened her mouth, then shut it again. Panic sang through her mind.

“Is she here?” asked Jess. “Is she?”

“Please stop talking,” Mrs Potter called out. “We’ll work together on how to use these words in everyday sentences.”

Almost gasping with relief, Isis turned to face the whiteboard, looking away from Jess and the elderly ghost. But Mandeville whispered in Isis’s ear.

“What will you do? Hide the truth of your power and undo all the good you have stirred – or carry on?”

“I miss her so much,” whispered Jess. “Can you talk to her for me?”

Isis stared at Mrs Potter, not hearing a word the teacher was saying. Could Mandeville be right? Might this be her chance to turn something that had always seemed a burden into something good?

She turned around. “At break time,” she whispered. “I’ll try.”

Chapter Nine

Isis

Raindrops pattered and slid down the classroom window. Outside, the playing field was darkened by mud and the line of birch trees at the end of the field were drooping under the rain, their leaves in murky greens and yellows, waiting to fall.

Isis turned away from the drab outdoors. The classroom was warm and bright with artificial light, cosy compared to the beginnings of autumn outside. Normally Isis hated wet break times, but normally she had to sit on her own, or at a table with the other outcasts.

Isis smiled.

“That’s so rubbish! Pink and sparkles are for little girls. I saw a purple one that had these black flowers on.” Jess was arguing with Hayley about phone covers. Both of them wanted new ones, even though as far as Isis could see there was nothing wrong with what they’d got.

“What do you think, Isis?” asked Jess. “Isn’t pink for babies?”

Isis was sitting with Jess and her gang. On their table. She’d been included for nearly two weeks now, and not because a teacher had made them, but because they’d asked her to. Well, Jess had, and the others did what Jess wanted.

“My mum buys me pink stuff,” said Isis.

“See!” cried Jess. “Isis agrees with me. You definitely should not get a pink one.”

“She didn’t say that!” said Hayley.

“If your mum chooses pink, you definitely shouldn’t!” said Jess. She laughed, and after a moment Hayley laughed too.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

“You can’t let your mum choose anything!” said Jess.

“Or you get jumpers with fluffy bobbles on,” agreed Chloe.

“Frilly dresses,” said Nafira, rolling her eyes.

“My mum does that too,” said Isis, although she’d never really cared what her mum bought. It had always been the least of her worries, and Cally hardly ever had the money to go shopping. But Isis didn’t say that; it felt much nicer going along with things.

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