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Jace gave her rough guffaw again, which was a little like I am trying to be cool and this is my Uncle Jack's laugh which would work on me if I was a grown British man in my late thirties. She was so pleased at being given the skateboard and trying not to show it that she was revealing her hated dimples, and also trying to flip her mop of short red hair off her dirtied face. "I'll be better than you," she said, although this was definitely not a sure thing. "Also you got a worm on your ear."

The girl reached forward to kindly remove the worm and dump it officiously in the freshly turned dirt. "Too bad it wasn't wetter," she said, already testing one foot on the skateboard to see how it handled. "Mud fight. I'll go buy you a Coke down the road if you never talk about Antony again. It's like I got switched at birth with him and he got the cool family and I got the lame-a** family. He'd be way happier if he was with my mom and I'd be way happier if I was with his dad who is a space alien. It's so not fair. How come you got, like, a rock band and I got a maths teacher?"

"I'm freakin' awesome," she said, and pushed a wobbly step forward on the skateboard. Jace stuck a tiny portion of her tongue out her mouth to concentrate, eyes focused in concentration, taking another long step and putting both legs on and trying to balance. As she caught up with him she stumbled, but attempted to go on. "But it must be cool having them be in a band," she persisted. "They're a rock band, right? You get to go listen to them play gigs and stuff. That's why you're always listening to music, too. M.B. said I was only allowed an mp3 player if I listened to classical music and I was, like, no goddamn way."

Rather than wishing murder on him, Jace immediately laughed at the sudden burst of speed - she wobbled a couple of metres before she finally wiped out, collapsing on somebody's lawn, but immediately picked herself back up again and got back on the board. "See," she insisted, "your family's actually cool. Nobody would stalk anyone in my family ever and the only neat one is my Uncle Jack, who does magic and stuff."

The engraving filled her with both envy and terrible longing; it wasn't as though anybody even remotely awesome was going to date her mother any time soon. Her mother was. Well. Her mother. "Show me how you balance on this damn thing," she demanded instead. And then: "You're an only kid too, right?"

"Summoning demons and stuff," Jace said with practiced indifference. It was totally awesome, but it wasn't too good to make it sound like it was really awesome: if Harper made fun of it then she'd have to try to punch him again, and they were going to go get Cokes and everything. She launched herself forward, trying to move her body in the way he'd told her. "He can also do stuff with his mind and expand rooms and he has a neverending beer can."

He was really offering her an mp3 player! M.B would so kill her. "I'll pay you," she said recklessly, and made the skateboard fishtail as she swerved her body back and forth. The laugh came once more as he pushed her. "For the player, I mean. I don't welsh on stuff like that... and I'd give you my little sister, only the last time I put her in a box and tried to mail her to Russia I got grounded until I was dead. Lame-a**."

"Dude, my mom has a tiny stone demon thing," Jace pointed out. "It's not like she dangles it from a string in the classroom or something. She picked up Thwomp years ago when she used to do it too with Uncle Jack. Thwomp's just a retard, he comes and rolls on my bladder at three in the morning."

She gave him another middle finger, but it seemed to be a lot more unaggressive now. She tossed her head - there wasn't much hair to toss: her scarlet hair had been shorn short - and pushed herself forward again. "Magic's usually pretty dumb anyway. You mean it about the mp3 player?"

Jacie? Well, it wasn't 'Jacoba', which was a massive improvement. Ugh. Well, 'Jacie' could pass by, unless he was being sarcastic about it. He was being pretty nice. And the skateboard was totally cool: she wanted one desperately. Maybe she could get one for her birthday or if she saved up. The 'Jacie' had also stunned her enough that she had missed him calling her a pretty girl, which might have ended in loud, embarrassed shrieks. Nobody had ever called her a pretty girl.

"Red," she said. "And yellow. And I bet you haven't done anything I wouldn't believe, either. I can believe a whole lot. Your family may be cool but it's not like you play guitar with them or anything or get groupies." (Actually, Jacoba had no idea what groupies were: she had the vague idea they cleaned up after you and got you snacks.)

They reached the corner shop: she would have given anything to be able to flip the skateboard up like she'd seen some people do on the Tony Hawk games, but didn't want to risk looking like a total retard. She stopped instead and picked it up, slinging it under her arm, the doorway beeping as they both went in and she opened the glass door to the drinks. "You want Coke, Sinclair?"

It was only with a lot of skill that Jace managed to pull herself out of the freezer - Diet Coke and Coke in hand - without bumping her head. "Seriously? Cool," she said. She'd have to have an alibi, but Antony could maybe be bribed into providing one. "That'd be awesome. Well. I guess. If they don't suck. Doesn't sound like they suck, though. Until they have you as the keyboardist," she added, and guffawed. "Your mom sounds funny."

She was reacting cautiously to him suddenly being amazingly nice, but she was definitely loosening up. She hadn't even threatened him with violence. "It'd be neat if you put some stuff on," she added. "Uncle Jack got me into some bands but I haven't listened to a whole heap. I just put the radio on when I'm working out. M.B. says if I work out too much now it'll stunt my growth but I'm, like, what the hell do you know?"

She retrieved some money out of her pocket and put the wadded-up change on the counter, then passed him his bottle. They were safely far away from the mayhem and probably were not going to get pinned on it: life was awesome. "So you're gonna be musical or whatever?"

"You should make a billion dollars and buy a mansion," she said practically, and slumped on the bench not far from the corner store overlooking a slightly overgrown sad little park. "That's what I'd do. I'd move way away from here and have a freakin' mansion."

Jace unscrewed the top off and took a long swig of soda: Beatrix was not so into soda at home, so she took whatever opportunity she had to drink it. "I do okay at math," she admitted grudgingly. "Especially with M.B. going over my homework. But I hate it and I hate English and I hate everything except gym, so if you say I'm a nerd or something I'll - I'll write a note to Riley saying you're hot for her." This wasn't a particularly aggressive threat, but she snickered anyway.