Elves and Escapades (Scholars and Sorcery Book 2) (16 page)

“Charley, old thing, can I have a word in your shell-like ear?” she asks in her impudent way.

I scowl at her. Kitty knows perfectly well that’s not any way to address any member of the Sixth, let alone a Senior Prefect.
 

She gives me a demure little smile, which she then turns on Rosalind, who is hovering uncertainly at my elbow.

“Don’t worry, dear heart. I’ll bring your precious Games Captain back to you intact and unblemished. I just need a little advice on my serve.”

I give in and let her drag me to an empty music room. I have the dismal feeling that whatever Kitty is up to, it’s best to find out as quickly as possible.

“Well?” I ask, leaning against a table and folding my arms. “I presume this is not actually about tennis, in the middle of winter, unless you’re more keen than I’ve been given to believe.”

Kitty, now that she has me, doesn’t seem at all inclined to open the conversation. She sits down at the piano, lifting the lid and picking pensively at a few notes.

“For goodness sake, spit it out, or I’m gone.”

“Gracious. Is that any way for a Senior Prefect to invite confidences?”
 

I slam the lid of the piano shut, giving Kitty just enough time to snatch her fingers away. “I have half an hour’s break, and I don’t intend to spend it trying to wheedle you into confiding in me. Say what you have to say, or I’m going.”

“I’m sorry, Charley.” The apology is so unexpectedly unKitty-like that my interest is caught despite myself, and I don’t object when she lifts the lid and returns to her idle fingering of the keys. “I just don’t really know how to start. You’re a decent sort, I know. I couldn’t ever go to Cecily, who is so fearfully upright.
You
might be able to help, though.” I’m not sure I like what she’s implying. Kitty has relaxed a little; her fingers move over the keyboard with more certainty, picking up a tinkling little tune. “I want you to keep an special eye on Di.”

“In what way?” I’m certain I don’t like what’s going on, now. Why is Kitty sneaking on her bosom friend?

“Well, let’s just say, keep an eye on her after lights-out.” Her fingers are flying over the keyboard now, the back of her fluffy ginger head blocking her expression from me.

“What have you two been up to?”

“Me? Oh, nothing. It’s just—you might like to keep an eye out, in a properly prefectish way, that’s all.”

I really wish Kitty had gone to Cecily. She’s much better at these things than I am. “Kitty, if Diana is in any kind of trouble, or you think she’s going to be, the right thing to do is to report it to a prefect. It’s not sneaking.”

“Sneaking? Do you really think I care about that schoolgirl code rot?” The faint Scottish burr in her voice becomes stronger with scorn. “My good girl, if I wished to sneak, I well and truly would sneak and not run circles around it.”

“What’s the problem, then?” I find it all too easy to believe that Kitty is contemptuous of concepts like code and honour. That is precisely what worries me. It suggests that whatever has sent her to me is truly serious to her.

Kitty’s fingers falter on the keys, then stop. She tilts her head halfway to me. “It’s more difficult than that. When it’s to do with people connected to my family, and I don’t know how serious it is…”

“Kitty, listen to me. You know I wouldn’t get anyone in trouble if I can help it. But you’re really frightening me. If Diana is doing anything very silly, then you need to tell me, directly.”

Her forehead creases a little. “You know that I invited Di home for the hols?” I didn’t. I nod my head anyway. “Well, Daddy has some friends that—sometimes he hangs around with a rather disreputable lot. People he met through racing and—things. Daddy’s not really bad, you must understand. He just makes bad friends.” She turns a beseeching gaze on me, like Meggs yearning after the cream I’m pouring on my breakfast. I don’t feel much like giving her cream or stroking her, although I feel an odd stirring of pity. Ridiculous, pitying a scamp who is rumoured to be a future Marchioness. “Well, Diana—she’s not a bad sort either, really, she just likes to pretend to be terribly grownup. And she’s been very protected and thinks she’s experienced when she doesn’t know about anything, really, at all.” There is sudden raw bitterness in her voice, and the feeling of pity increases. A girl of sixteen or so shouldn’t know enough to have such knowing anger in her voice at the thought of someone else’s innocence.
 

“There were young friends of Daddy who found Diana very amusing. She can be, you know. And she is almost as good at using Charms and Glamours as I am,” she admits, calmly. “She has no trouble winning people over. I understand that. The thing is, I would never be stupid enough to use my Gift on some of Daddy’s young friends. Diana is.”

I grasp her shoulders and shake her, lightly, trying to shake some sense out of her. “What are you trying to tell me, Kitty?”

“I don’t even quite know. I just know that she’s been excited about something, lately, and hasn’t been telling even me about it. Just silly hints, and then she shuts up. I’m afraid it’s pretty bad, if she thinks even someone like me won’t approve.” The ‘someone like me’ is entirely devoid of shame. “Daddy has friends in this county, and they’re not—they’re not good people for a naive girl like Angela to know.” All the impudence and brightness is gone from her face now. “I’m sorry I introduced her to them.”

My head is spinning. “But what do you mean?”

 
“There’s—oh, certain kinds of magic— that are best done with a pretty, innocent young girl. She is so innocent really, Charley, even though she thinks she’s so sophisticated and grownup. That’s quite the worst of it.” Kitty presses her hands to her cheeks.

My own face feels cold, as if the blood has left it. “You mean they’ll —they’ll hurt her?”

“Oh, no. Nothing as bad as that,” she says quickly, picking up my meaning. “They wouldn’t harm her. But it won’t be—nice—and Daddy just said girls must have their adventures and let her have her fun while she can when I wrote to him that I was worried and oh, Charley, I felt like I had to tell someone sensible!” She ends in a wail. “I was the one who took her to visit them! It was only a dance!”

“You need to go straight to Miss Carroll, Kitty. I can’t deal with something like this.”
 

She shakes her head vehemently. “It’s no good. I don’t actually know anything and I won’t tell her what I do know even if you drag me there by the scruff of my neck. If I cause difficulties for Daddy’s friends over nothing, it will be… awkward. Daddy won’t ever forgive me. Can’t you just mind Diana until it blows over? Make sure she stays put?”

I lift a hand to my curls and ruffle them, hopelessly. It doesn’t feel like the right decision somehow. I just don’t know what else to do. It’s not like Kitty has told me anything specific.

I nod, reluctantly conceding defeat. “I’ll keep watch over her.”

Kitty is all smiles again. “Once again, you are a sport, Charley.” She slips past me to the door and is gone.

I glare after her. I suppose she has been of some help in her own way. All I can truly feel is that this is a complication I don’t need.

Nevertheless, I go to Matron, and request that my bed is changed with Rosalind’s, putting me next to Diana. She raises an eyebrow, but she trusts me enough to assume I have a reason for the change and doesn’t press me. Of course, I belatedly realise, if Diana is on her last chance at Ferneligh Manor it’s likely all the head staff know about her.

Sometimes I think this school trusts
me
far more than I could possibly deserve.
 

Nothing out of the ordinary happens for the next few nights. I begin to relax. Kitty obviously got her hair up into a bun over nothing. After all, Diana is sly and secretive by nature. All that’s happened is that I’m sleeping in what was Rosalind’s bed, which is an odd and warming thought.

As soon as I decide this, of course, I wake in the middle of the night to the distinct impression of emptiness and silence from the cubicle next to me.

I pull myself out of bed and check. Gone. I breathe a very nasty word under my breath and reach for my dressing gown and slippers.

I have to get a mistress. It’s my clear duty. Kitty’s vague hints suggest that this could be very serious indeed. There’s no time to worry about the consequences for the House, or about what will happen to Diana if she’s expelled once again. It’s entirely stupid to think we can get Diana back and no harm done. I need to go to Miss Carroll, right now, and put a stop to everything.

Instead, I go to haul Kitty out of bed, as quietly as possible.
 

She raises her hands to her face when I tell her that Diana has slipped past me. “Oh, you blithering idiot!” I don’t know if she is addressing the absent Diana, or me. There’s no time to take her to task, either way.

I shake her shoulders. “Kitty! If you have any idea where she might have gone, you need to take me there.”

The moonlight through the window falls on her, making her almost glow in a way that highlights her elfin features. Her face is rounder and, admittedly, prettier, but there’s something about her big round eyes and pointed ears that is enough like Rosalind to soften my mood a little. “She’s your friend, Kitty,” I say, more gently. “We can’t let her down.”

A little to my surprise, she gives a subdued nod.
 

“Good girl.” I pat her head. “Get dressed, quickly. I’ll do the same.”

I move as softly as possible back to my dormitory and pull on my outdoor clothes, my mind racing. I have no real belief in my ability to drag Diana back alone, and I don’t have much faith in Kitty. I need someone with strength of character.

I’m determined to keep Rosalind out of it. She risks quite enough trouble for my sake, and night air in winter can’t be good for her lungs. My first instinct is to go to Cecily. After all, isn’t it the whole school’s habit to lay their troubles on her broad shoulders? My beloved Cecily, who has spent half the evening closeted with a Third Former who has got herself into some kind of mess over exams, then grimly trying to tackle her prep. in the remaining time, hollow shadows under her brown eyes. Earnest, hard-working Cecily, who has tried so hard to knock the School House into shape this year, only to have Kitty and her blasted lot spoil it over and over. No, I can’t bring myself to wake her, not for this.

Gladys is out of the question. Between her temper and her strict interpretation of rules, she’d be hopeless. I want to keep the trouble within School House, so the prefects from other houses are out, and Emily of the Fifth clearly can’t control her own form. That’s it for the prefects, then. Besides, I want someone daring, who doesn’t care too much for rules.

I pad across to Esther's cubicle.

I regret my decision almost immediately. She’s not an easy girl to wake without rousing the entire dorm. I shake and whisper and long for a wet face washer to put down her neck. Eventually she sputters awake and opens her mouth, planning, I just know, to say something flirtatious about my presence. I block the words with a hand on her lips.

“Es, I need you to get dressed quickly and quietly, and come with me. There’s something up.”

She gives me a narrow glance, then sits up. I’m grateful that she’s loyal enough not to say a word of demurral. I sit on the side of her bed, impatiently watching her pull on her clothes.

“What on earth is going on?” Rosalind draws back the curtains of the cubicle, her mouth tightening as she notes me sitting on Esther’s bed, fully clothed, watching her dress.

I put my finger to my lips in warning. Rosalind wrenches the curtains closed behind her with a snap so hard they nearly tear from the rail and flings herself on the bed next to me, putting her mouth to my ear. “If you think I’m going to let you out somewhere in the middle of the night with another girl, especially this one, you have another think coming.”

Despite my worry, I grin a little. It’s like being scolded by a fairy. Esther is smiling, too, in her puckish way, and I’m pretty certain she has guessed the gist of what Rosalind is hissing in my ear.

“Come into the corridor and I’ll tell both you and Esther about it,” I whisper.

The three of us make it out into the corridor. Kitty is already there, hopping impatiently from one foot to the other and none too pleased to see my company. “Must we really bring half the Sixth?”
 

“I didn’t intend to. Hang on.” I fill Rosalind and Esther in on the situation in an undertone. “Now, Rosalind, will you be an angel and go back to bed? This isn’t your business to deal with. You’re not a prefect.”

She shakes her head, her newly bobbed hair floating around her face like the moonlight streaming in the window. “Neither are they. Stay here. I won’t take two minutes to dress.”

“Rosalind, listen to sense,” I protest, helplessly. She looks so small and slender and so unfitted to midnight adventures. Of course, so does Kitty, and I’m making her come.
 

“She was my friend, Charley. She might listen to me.” Rosalind lifts her chin. “Besides, I’m not being kept out of this. I’ll go straight to Miss Carroll if you try.”