Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,45

why I have to be so careful. The trouble is, once you let something like that loose, a secret group with more money behind them than any government, then the genie’s out of the bottle, if you get my meaning, and now they’ve…”

“That’s enough,” said Dad, cutting him off. “I don’t want him knowing anything from the top-secret part of the Database.”

I stared at the back of Dad’s head, wondering how much of all this he believed. Stu’s eyes bulged, waiting for my reaction.

I sighed. “So the quarry is to do with aliens, is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” said Stu. “What I’m saying is this quarry isn’t about what they tell you. It’s about what they aren’t telling.”

And then Dad and Stu started arguing about whether or not the world’s super-rich are secretly using alien technologies themselves, and Stu got very het up about film stars who look really young but are actually in their sixties. I stopped listening, because I don’t really care if facelifts were invented by aliens.

I mean, it’s not true, is it? There isn’t some secret organisation paid for by the world’s super-rich, with agents creeping about and trying to mind-control people…

Gray. Look at the watch. Focus on it. Now, you will continue to believe Stu’s story is ridiculous. You will forget ever having heard of the Organisation.

You’re hypnotising me, aren’t you?

Look at the watch.

Dad said you can break it if you…

See the way the watch glitters.

If you… If you… What was I talking about?

Chapter Seventeen

Isis

“What’s going on?” Isis asked. It was Monday morning and they were trying to get to geography, but were blocked by a crowd ahead of them in the corridor. Pupils seemed to fill every bit of space, stopping anyone from getting by, talking over each other. The crowd centred around the entrance to the girls’ toilets.

Isis sighed, feeling irritable. She’d felt this way ever since they visited the standing stone: ready to snap, her temper on edge. As if something had shifted with the world, and nothing quite fitted any more. She felt anxious too. She’d managed to explain away Mandeville’s words at the seance, but her new friends were more wary of her than they had been, as if she was a bomb and they couldn’t trust her not to go off. Only Jess seemed unaffected.

“Out of the way!” shouted Jess, trying to push her way through the mob. She got pushed back and gave up, shaking her head.

Isis could hear a girl sobbing. She stood on tiptoe, but still couldn’t see what was causing this crowd.

“None of them will budge, must be a fight or something,” said Nafira.

A Year Seven boy turned around. “It’s not fighting, is it? Something’s in there!”

“What’s in there?” asked Isis.

The boy pulled his eyebrows into a puzzled frown. “You know. You’re the one who said it.”

“Said what?”

“That it’s haunted!” The boy’s voice was thick with astonishment. “You saw the ghost! You said the ghosts want to kill us all. Johno says your eyes went all weird, like this…” he rolled his eyes back, leaving mostly the whites showing, “and then you said—”

“I didn’t!” said Isis. “I mean, I did, but it was a misunderstanding.”

The boy looked disbelieving, and a little disappointed. “What about the ghost in the toilet that sucks your life out?”

“I never said there was a ghost in…” Isis stopped. Because she had. Those toilets were where she’d held the seance for Summer, introducing her to her ancestors, with Mandeville’s help.

“I never said the ghosts were bad,” she said, sounding lame even to herself.

The boy gave her a look, obviously thinking she was just trying to backtrack.

The sobs of the girl in the middle of the crowd continued.

Another boy, further into the scrum, called over his shoulder to report what was going on.

“It’s someone from 2F,” he said. “She’s completely lost it! Says she saw something inside one of the cubicles.” He paused to listen. “She’s totally freaking out!” he cried gleefully.

A horrified hot feeling ran through Isis. Whoever the girl was, this would follow her all through the rest of school!

“I should do something,” Isis said, holding tight to her school bag. “Tell them there’s nothing to be scared of, or tell them it was only a joke.”

“No!” snapped Jess. “If you say it was a joke, no one will believe any of the rest! What’ll happen if people think we’ve been messing with them?” She shook her head. “Let’s go another way.”

“But that means right around the school!” said Nafira.