Authors: Christopher Golden
The morning had come without fanfare, the skies overcast with a funereal gray. But as Rose and her aunts breakfasted and showered and dressed, the clouds burned off and the sky turned a soft, promising blue. The apartment still felt cold, autumn eternally fighting a losing battle with the winter to come.
They had stayed up late the night before. The more Rose had learned—both of her own history and of her aunts’ intentions—the more she had argued with them. And it was an argument that continued even now, as they left the building on Acorn Street, all three of them glancing around to be certain that the crows were the only things watching them.
“This is a mistake,” Rose said as they walked down the street to where Aunt Fay had parked her Mercedes.
“You don’t want to say good-bye to your friends?” Aunt Fay asked.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” Rose replied. “Running away is a mistake.”
“Dying would be better?” Aunt Suzette asked.
Aunt Fay pressed a button on her key chain and the Mercedes beeped, unlocking itself. Rose and her aunts climbed into the car.
“I don’t want to die,” Rose said as she slammed her door. “But if I’m half fey and you say I have glamours, then I’m not totally helpless. We should stay. Hide away, sure, but only while you teach me. And then we should fight.”
Aunt Fay started the car, the engine purring to life. “Maurelle is very powerful.”
“Birds drove her off yesterday!” Rose said.
Aunt Suzette turned to look into the backseat at her. “Not just birds. There are glamours involved. And she felt us coming for her.”
“That’s what I’m saying. The three of us together. We take her on. Otherwise we’ll just be running away until she takes us by surprise someday, maybe one by one. It’s better to stand and fight.”
Aunt Fay sighed, her hands tight on the steering wheel. “We’ve been through this, Rose. I agree with you. Eventually, we have to fight her. But not until we’ve had the time to teach you and see just what kind of enchantment you’re capable of. Until then, we get as far away from here as we can. We get
lost.
”
Rose let out a long breath and settled back, the leather
seat creaking under her. She watched the brownstones going by and remained silent as Aunt Fay navigated into the Back Bay, driving toward Marlborough Street. The tension in the car grew, but she knew it stemmed not from their disagreement but from the knowledge that Maurelle could be following them that very moment.
When Aunt Fay turned off of Marlborough and drove down the narrow alley toward St. Bridget’s, Rose looked out the back window, craning her neck to check the sky. Several crows alighted on a building ledge, watching them pass, and that gave her comfort. Somehow Maurelle had difficulty fighting the black birds, or else they frightened her. Either way, Rose was happy to see them.
They parked in the small lot behind the school and walked back around to the front door, reacting to every sound. When a jogger ran past, Aunt Suzette grabbed Rose’s wrist and held her back. Rose thought she saw a sparkle in her aunt’s eyes that had nothing to do with the sun, or anything else of the ordinary world. Aunt Suzette’s eyes were gold, flecked with a kaleidoscope of gleaming colors.
“Do you see the wards?” Aunt Fay asked, gesturing toward the front door.
Rose frowned, shaking her head. But then she narrowed her eyes. Were there symbols above the door and on the keystone where the building’s origin was engraved? She remembered the special attention they had paid to the keystone when they had first visited the school, and
the way that Aunt Fay had wandered off for a bit and had seemed to be chanting and poking at thin air on the school grounds.
“And over there,” Aunt Suzette said, pointing at the corner of the building, where damp fall leaves had collected against the concrete foundation.
Again she saw nothing at first, but cocked her head and looked more closely. As if her focus had made them visible, strange, rust-colored sigils appeared on the concrete. There were markings that looked almost like hieroglyphics, drawn in peculiar spirals, as well as words in what she suspected was Latin. There were other symbols that seemed a part of some unknown alphabet, but it wasn’t any language she recognized. It made Rose wonder what else had always been there, just behind the curtain of the reality she knew.
Aunt Fay took up a position at the top of the steps, just to the right of the door.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” she said. “You two go on inside. Rose, you’re not to leave your aunt Suzette’s side, do you understand?”
Rose thought of Jared, and how she would explain why she had to leave. How would she say good-bye?
“What if there are things I want to say that are private?” she asked.
Aunt Fay glanced up at the crows, which had begun circling above the school. Then she looked at her sister.
“Just don’t let her out of your sight.”
Aunt Suzette frowned. “I’m not a fool, Fay. And you’re not the only one who loves her.”
They both looked at Rose, who nodded once, steeled herself, and went inside.
•
Rose stood in the cafeteria doorway, scanning the tables. A terrible sadness filled her as she realized this would be the last time she set foot in St. Bridget’s school. Some of the people here had treated her horridly, but others had been kind and funny and had been her friends. Only fragments of her memory had returned—her aunts said it would take time—but she remembered enough to know that it had been difficult for the daughter of the duke of Rigaud to befriend, or even meet, people her own age. She hadn’t been at St. Bridget’s very long, but it tore at her heart to bid it farewell.
They had purposely come during the period when her friends would be at lunch. It was the best opportunity for Rose to say her good-byes. And now she spotted Jared sitting with Kylie and Dom in the middle of the last long table, on the far side of the cafeteria.
“Could you just wait here?” she asked Aunt Suzette. “You’ll be able to see me the whole time.”
Aunt Suzette frowned. In her stylish burgundy shirt and black pants, she looked like she could have been the mother of any of the students. If Rose were to try to tell anyone what she really was, no one would ever have
believed her. People would think she was lying or crazy or trying to be funny.
This isn’t her world,
Rose thought. But then she realized that wasn’t true at all. Her aunts had as much right to be here as anyone, and so did she. Which made her even more frustrated that they had to run.
“Five minutes,” Aunt Suzette said. “Mrs. Sauer said she didn’t want any drama.”
Rose smiled. “She said she didn’t want any
more
drama. And since her granddaughter has been tormenting me since I got here, I couldn’t care less what she wants.”
“Five minutes,” Aunt Suzette said again.
Rose nodded and walked down the stairs. Kylie and Dom had their backs to her and Jared had not noticed her yet. She felt as if she were both there and not there, as if—like the warding symbols on the front of the school—she might be invisible unless someone knew to look for her and knew how to see her. Plates clattered. Conversation buzzed. The sunlight shone into the room through the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, the curtains drawn back, perhaps to make up for the ugly gray of the previous day. She watched through patches of sunlight and swashes of shadow, people navigating around her with their trays. She passed one of the cafeteria’s thick columns and now she was two tables away from her friends. Dom clowned around, holding a fork and spoon over his head like antlers, and Jared laughed brightly.
She wondered what they thought had happened to her, if they imagined she must have called in sick after
the beating she had taken yesterday. Jared had texted fourteen times last night and called six. She had ignored every message from him, and from Kylie and Dom as well. Yet Rose thought they didn’t look very worried about her. They looked as if to them this was just another day at school. And maybe it was.
She wondered if they were her friends—if Jared felt something for her—or if they were feigning friendship and beneath the masks of their faces they were impossible things put there by Maurelle to lead her to destruction.
Then, in the middle of telling a story or a joke, Jared glanced up and saw her walking toward their table. He froze. In a single heartbeat she wondered a hundred other things. And then his face lit up with a smile of relief and he sprang from his seat and started toward her.
“Jared, what are you…” Kylie started, turning to see where he was going.
When she saw Rose, Kylie grinned and clapped her hands with happiness. She dragged Dom out of his seat and then they were coming toward her as well.
Rose exhaled. These were her friends. Real friends, not some kind of
thing
made by Maurelle. She glanced back toward the cafeteria entrance, where Aunt Suzette stood sentinel, watching over her, and gave a little wave to reassure her.
“Hey,” Jared said, looking a bit awkward after the tension between them yesterday.
To Rose, it seemed to have happened ages ago.
“Hey,” she replied.
“Are you okay?” Jared asked. “We were pretty worried about—”
“Skip the gooey stuff,” Kylie said sternly, glaring at him. The wildness in her eyes seemed to have been sharpened, focused, but not tamed as she turned to Rose. “I am so mad at you I could scream!”
Dom tugged her sleeve. “K, she was the one with all the bruises.”
“I know that,” Kylie snapped, pulling away from him. She looked at Rose, a little afraid and a lot angry. “We were totally freaking out yesterday and then, last night, you couldn’t have replied to, like, one text? Or friggin’ called me back? Or at least called Jared back?”
Rose cringed, guilt punishing her. “You’re right. I’m sorry. There’s just… it’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot going on, and I…”
Her eyes began to brim with unshed tears.
“What is it?” Jared asked, reaching out and taking her hand.
Rose sighed and gave a little shrug. “I came to say good-bye.”
Kylie’s brows knitted together. “What are you talking about? You can’t just—”
Glass shattered, one of the huge windows exploding inward as something crashed through it. Glass shards rained down onto the tables near the window. People screamed and tried to shield themselves. But Rose could
only watch the body smash to the floor and roll in a flailing tumble of limbs.
“No,” Rose said, a whisper amidst the screams.
Students were jumping up, staring at the body sprawled on the floor. Shouts and screams led to a sudden trampling move toward exodus. Aunt Suzette’s voice reached Rose, somehow audible above all of the others, but Rose could not tear her gaze away from the tangle of limbs and blood-soaked clothing on the floor.
Aunt Fay stared up at Rose with dead eyes, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. Blood pooled beneath her, spreading across the linoleum. A dead crow had been stuffed into her mouth.
“… ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod…” Kylie was saying, over and over, holding on to Rose’s arm like a lifeline.
“This is crazy,” Dom muttered. “This can’t be happening.”
Jared kept saying her name, but Rose couldn’t look at him. She stared at Aunt Fay, wanting to scream or cry, to destroy something with her bare hands, but wondering what it meant. What about the wards? What about the—
Something struck a different window with a thump loud enough that every student in the cafeteria looked up. A crow had struck the glass and now it fell dead to the ground outside the glass. For the first time Rose noticed that the blue sky had turned gray and there were clouds rolling in.
Through the broken window she saw a figure dart
across the sky, twisting as though she danced in the midst of a tornado. Crows dove after the figure, cutting at her from all sides.
“The Black Heart,” Rose said. She began to kneel beside Aunt Fay. “I’m sorry, Auntie. I’m so sorry.”
Another bird hit a window, but this time the glass spiderwebbed with cracks. Another strike or a strong wind and it would shatter. People crowded around, trying to get a closer look at Aunt Fay’s corpse. A wave of curious students had started to flow toward them from the other side of the caf, but most of the people near the broken window were hurrying toward the stairs, trying to get out of the room and into a part of the school without so much glass… or just away from the torn-up body on the floor.
Or maybe they saw her through the window,
Rose thought.
Maybe they saw it all happening.
A teacher shouted at them to get away from the windows. Someone shook her, then did it again, harder.
“Rose!” Jared said, grabbing her face and forcing her to look at the fear and confusion in his eyes. “They’re ordering everyone out.”
She almost argued. Aunt Fay lay dead at her feet, blood spreading around her. Someone had to cover her, protect her. Then somehow Rose woke from the shock that had paralyzed her and she glanced up at the windows again. The wind roared in, sweeping the floor and making crisp autumn leaves and glass shards skitter like cockroaches.
Kylie stared out the shattered window, her face slack. Rose took her by the hand and turned to Dom and Jared.
“Stay together,” she said. “Don’t get trampled.”
They surged into the crowd of students pushing for the stairs. Someone elbowed Rose in the chest but she only grunted and kept moving, trying to get a glimpse of Aunt Suzette. She had been keeping close, but when Rose had gone over to her friends, her aunt had given her space, and now that the entire panicked throng of students in the cafeteria was up and trying to flee, they had momentarily lost each other.
Rose’s heart hammered in her chest, pulse thumping in her temples. Fear surged through her, racing through her veins even as a shroud of guilt closed around her.
My fault,
she thought.
Aunt Fay is dead and it’s my fault. More people are going to die… if my friends die… I brought her here.
Maurelle.
Where could she hide? With Aunt Fay dead, could Aunt Suzette fight Maurelle? The wards kept her out for the moment, it seemed, but what about the crows? Some of them were almost dead. She had to get away from the rest of the students, find a place to barricade herself and Aunt Suzette. And if Maurelle got inside… well, they’d have to fight. There’d be no choice.