Betrayal (13 page)

S
ilence.

They had gone.

Slowly, I pushed the door open and climbed out of my hiding place. My legs were shaking and my mouth was dry. Now I knew the truth at last. I had long suspected that Miss Raglan and Miss Dalrymple were my enemies, but Miss Scratton—upright, grave, and just—how could she be part of their twisted world? I felt sick with disgust, but I had to face it. Miss Scratton was a Dark Sister who had vowed to spy on me. The last shred of any faith I had in the school that was supposed to be my home had been utterly annihilated.

There was a fire burning in me, and it was fueled by hatred. Yes, I hated those women who were supposed to
teach us and care for us but who regarded us as no more than pawns in their insane game. I wanted to lash out and destroy everything that was around me, to smash their bookcases and their pictures and their school. I would go to the police, I thought; I would tell them everything I had seen and heard, how Mrs. Hartle had killed Laura by draining her life force from her to prolong Sebastian’s existence, and how they were planning to do the same to me.

Even as the thoughts formed themselves in my mind I knew it was hopeless. Nobody would listen. Nobody would believe it.

That wasn’t the way, I told myself. I had to stay calm. I had to make my plans before the new moon hung in the sky like a branch of white fire. Everything was leading to that moment.
Think, Evie, think….

I crept over to the fancy fireplace and felt carefully amid its marble leaves and carved fruit, found the secret place, and pressed hard. The narrow chamber swung open. I reached inside for the Book. But first my hand touched something else: something cold and steely. The silver dagger. Mrs. Hartle had dropped it as we battled in the crypt and her sisters must have brought it back here for safekeeping. After a moment’s hesitation I stuffed it in
my pocket. Then I picked up the Book, and as I touched it a voice seemed to sound in my mind, chanting an old rhyme:

I knew I should get out of there and go back to the dorm as soon as I could, but I was desperate to open the Book and devour its secrets. I placed it carefully on the table. The green leather cover was exactly as Agnes had described, with the words
The Mysticke Way
gleaming faint and silver in the moonlight. How many people had held this ancient object in their hands? How many of them had been led into despair by its words?
The Mysticke Way is a path of Healing,
I repeated to myself.
I seek Healing for Sebastian…for Wyldcliffe…for all of us….

I began to flick through the pages at random. They were dry and musty and the lettering was difficult to read. Some of the pages were decorated with red and green inks, just like the page that Agnes had left me, and some were written in Latin and Greek and other languages that
I didn’t recognize. I was in too much of a hurry to take in what I was looking at, and the Book seemed to have a mind of its own. Some of the pages were stuck together and wouldn’t open, and sometimes they flipped open as though blown by an invisible wind. I caught glimpses of many obscure spells and charms:
For Finding a True Friend; To Foretell the Weather; To Charm Poison from a Toad; For Making Rain; To Cure Rheumatics; The Gift of Sight; The Gift of Death…

The Gift of Death.
The bold black letters seemed to stare up at me and pierce my mind. The rest of the page was decorated with some kind of woodcut, showing a grim figure of Death and a bright angel, side by side.
The Gift of Death.
For some reason I wanted to know more. I tried to turn the page to read the details of the spell, but the pages wouldn’t open. This part of the Book had been sealed against me.

The church bell sounded in the distance, its thin peal clear and sharp in the winter night. Midnight. In a few seconds it would be a new day. A wind stirred through the room, and the pages of the Book flapped in the breeze, then fell still, opening at a new place. I looked down. The letters on the page were shaped like tongues of red flame.

To Summon the Secret Fire.

The church bell struck one last time. The secret fire, the sacred flame, the source of light and power—Agnes had served it faithfully. And when she wanted to seal her powers inside the Talisman she had summoned the flame and thrust the silver trinket into its fiery heart. I remembered the words from her journal.
My life force seemed to be dragged out of me and into the silver jewel…. My powers are sealed in its silvery heart….

It was all so clear, so simple now. I knew what I had to do. If I could summon that fire myself, I would be able to put the Talisman back into the mystical flames and unseal it once again. And then Agnes’s powers would be mine and I would be armed with her strength as I fought to free Sebastian from his doom.

Hugging the Book to my heart, I whispered, “Thank you. Thank you, Agnes.”

I had found what I was looking for.

T
he next morning Helen had to shake me from sleep.

“Evie, the bell rang. Why aren’t you getting up?”

“What..? Uhh…so tired…” I sat up and yawned; then everything from the night before came flooding back to me. I grabbed hold of Helen’s wrist in excitement. “I’ve got so much to tell you.”

“Me too,” she replied. “I just heard two of the cleaning women talking in the corridor. Apparently it’s happened again.”

“What?”

“An attack in the village. Another creature nailed to a door. This time it was a chicken, with its head cut off and feathers everywhere. It’s awful. The locals are getting
pretty angry about it, talking about chucking the Gypsies off the land. Sarah’s going to be upset.”

I looked around. Sophie was slowly getting dressed, and Celeste was still lying in bed.

“That’s not all Sarah’s going to be upset about,” I said in a low voice, not wanting to be overheard. “We need to talk.” I threw my clothes on and we hurried downstairs to find Sarah in the stables before the bell rang for breakfast. It was a bright, clear morning, and the frost sparkled on the ground with a hundred tiny points of light. Sarah was mucking out Starlight, her cheeks pink with exertion, but the color drained from her face when I told her and Helen what I had found and seen.

“I can’t believe it,” Sarah said. “Any of the others, but not Miss Scratton.”

“I saw her. I heard what she said. She’s as bad as the rest of them.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” replied Sarah stubbornly. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Anyone is capable of doing wrong, Sarah.” Helen sighed. “And immortality is a powerful temptation. People have stolen and killed for much less.”

“Miss Scratton would never do anything like that.”

“I wish it weren’t true, but it is,” I said. “It doesn’t make any difference, though. We always knew we were on our own in this. She couldn’t have helped us anyway, and it’s better to know who our enemies are.”

“Enemies?” said a thin, nasal voice. “Who’s got enemies?” We spun around and saw Harriet standing in the doorway of the stable.

“We were talking about…the…the next lacrosse match,” I gabbled. “Planning tactics.”

“Oh. I thought you hated lacrosse.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t duck out of it, so I might as well try…. Um…are you okay, Harriet? Any more headaches?”

“No…no.” She suddenly looked around nervously, then scurried off.

“What was all that about?” Helen asked when she had gone. “How much do you think she heard?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah. “We’ll have to be more careful. Although I don’t suppose there’s anything in it except Harriet being weird as usual.”

I wasn’t so sure. As Harriet had walked away, I had noticed something. There were some streaks of reddish brown dirt on the side of her skirt, like mud or rust. Or even, perhaps, like blood.

Dinner was over. It was our official letter-writing time. A duty once a week. Some of the girls grumbled about not being allowed to call home. “I mean, haven’t they heard of cell phones?” they moaned. But Wyldcliffe had its own way of doing things. Wyldcliffe students were expected to be able to write expressive, elegant, polite letters just as the students of fifty years ago had done. So there we were, heads bent, scribbling away, clinging to another fading custom, pretending that the modern world could be blotted out as easily as the snow blotted out the grass.

Miss Scratton walked slowly up and down the room, handing out pieces of writing paper, ticking off untidy handwriting, watching everything with her sharp black eyes. I felt her gaze sweep over me, and my stomach heaved with revulsion. Did she really think I would be so stupid as to mention Sebastian in my letters to Dad? Did she really think she would catch me so easily? I bent my head and tried to write my letter. I hated Miss Scratton now; I would never stop hating her, and the hatred burned in my head like an obsession. But I had to pretend that I was perfectly happy, that I was a carefree student, writing home, chatting about nothing.

I stuffed the letter into an envelope. I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say:

There were some things that were impossible to say.

I didn’t sleep that night. One by one, Helen, Sarah, and
I slipped out of our dorms and made our way to the secret attic. I was the last to arrive, hiding a small bundle under my robe. Helen and Sarah gathered around me eagerly as I brought out the book and turned the pages to the right place.

“Look! There in the margin,” I said. Someone had added notes in pencil at the edge of the page. “Sebastian…That’s his writing, I’m sure.”

Helen held the candle closer to decipher the faint words. “‘I have attempted this many times,’” she read slowly. “‘Each time I have failed and been rejected by the Powers. Yet I will master this, if it takes every drop of my blood.’”

“He never did,” I said. “Only Agnes could reach the sacred fire, and she didn’t need the Book to do it.”

“Are you ready to try, Evie?”

“I’m ready.”

Helen set the candles out in a circle around us. “Let all our deeds be pleasing to the Light of Lights; let them be as clear and pure as the mountain air.”

Then Sarah laid bunches of fresh evergreen leaves between the wavering candles. “Let our thoughts be as strong as the trees that grow in the earth; let them bear fruit that is good and wholesome.”

I scooped water into my hands from one of the stone jars and let the shining droplets fall on the greenery. “Let our lives be cleansed; let our minds be without stain.”

We held hands and chanted together: “Let this be our circle of protection and knowledge. Let the Mystic Rites begin.”

I cannot betray the secrets of all that we did. But when all was prepared, we burned the oils and the herbs prescribed in the Book and watched the smoke curl up to the roof. Then I closed my eyes as Sarah pressed the silver dagger against my bare arm and let a single drop of my blood fall into the smoking mixture.

The blood of our veins…the fire of our desires…show us
the fire…the fire of life….

I was falling. The air rushed past me like the beating of angels’ wings. I was spinning into darkness, and the voices of Sarah and Helen were lost to me. I was entirely alone in the whole universe. Then there was a light ahead, and everything slowed down. I had arrived at the heart of a deep cavern, and the light in front of my eyes was so dazzling that I could hardly bear to look at it. But I had no choice. Somehow, I approached and saw that the light was coming from a column of leaping fire, great flames twisting silver and red and blue, orange and purple and white, like living diamonds. The heat was terrible and I was afraid that I would burn away like a dry leaf, but at the same time I knew that I must reach out to the flame. As I tried to do so, I was blasted back by the force of the fire, and a voice seemed to say, “You cannot approach the sacred fire; it is not for you…. The living water calls to you, sister. Go back; you do not belong here.”

“No,” I called out in desperation, “you must let me approach. I was sent here; Agnes sent me….”

Then the voice, or the thoughts in my head—I couldn’t be sure—seemed to speak again. “There is light in your soul and courage in your heart. But these are deep mysteries and only a few may be welcomed. You cannot pass
through the flames without a token of belonging. A token of fire. Bring that next time and the powers may be more gracious.”

Then it seemed that the light and the heat would destroy me utterly, burning away every particle of my being, and I screamed as the flames surrounded me.

“Evie! Evie, it’s all right! Come back!” Someone splashed water on my face and I woke up in the attic, sprawled on the faded carpet. The leaves and herbs had been scattered and the circle was broken. Sarah and Helen were bending over me, looking anxious. I shook my head wearily.

“I couldn’t do it. I don’t belong in the realm of fire.”

I felt so flat and dull, aching with emptiness. I had been so sure that it would work. Why hadn’t Agnes appeared to me? Where had she gone? I missed her, and I seemed to be losing her as well as Sebastian. I had failed; I couldn’t do it….

“So what happened? Can you try again?” asked Helen.

“I’m not sure. They said—or someone seemed to say—that I could, but I would have to take something with me, something from Agnes, I think.”

“What?”

“I don’t know—a token of fire, whatever that is.”

“Do they mean the Talisman?”

“No—not that. I don’t know how they told me, but I have to find something else. The token.” I slammed my hand on the floor in frustration. “I was so close! All I had to do was reach out…and now I’ve no idea what to do.”

“We’ll find the way, Evie, I promise,” said Sarah soothingly.

“But when? How? If Miss Raglan is confirmed as the High Mistress at the next new moon, I think she’ll be strong enough to act openly against us. And Sebastian can’t hold on forever.”

“Let’s give it one more try, at least,” Helen said, her green-yellow eyes shining in the candlelight. “A token of fire. We’ve got to find that before we do anything else.”

“I’ll find it,” I said grimly. “I’ll find it, whatever it takes.”

I will master this, if it takes every drop of my blood….

I would give my blood, my tears, my hope. Oh, I would go on and on until the bitter end, until I had nothing else left to give.