The Curse in the Candlelight

by Sophie Cleverly

  I think the same thoughts ran through all of our heads. Miss Bowler. The freezing-cold swimming pool. The lake from the school trip, where Ariadne had felt something grabbing her leg …

  “Perhaps not,” we all said in unison.

  We made our way to the hall, where the sign-up sheets for the different sports were pinned on the boards. Of course, there was no question of what Ivy and I were going to pick. We’d loved ballet for years, even if it had got us into trouble in the past. Although that was usually more my fault than the ballet’s.

  Ariadne had gone from hating hockey to enjoying it. I saw her face fall as she watched Muriel sign her name on the sheet. Still, she went over and added her name below it. I gave her a reassuring pat on the back as I walked past.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Fine for you, maybe,” Ariadne grumbled.

  Miss Bowler was marching around like an army sergeant, as usual. She seemed to be relishing the extra power she’d been given now that Mrs Knight was headmistress. “Girls!” she barked periodically. “Sign up and get in your groups!”

  We were amongst the usual ballet crowd, minus the girls who had left the school. Madame Zelda was standing beside us, waving an incense stick (which was something she liked to do for no apparent reason).

  After a lot of hustle and bustle, everyone was finally in their groups.

  Everyone except Ebony.

  She was standing in the middle of the hall, her boots firmly planted, her arms folded, her black hair tumbling over her sleeves.

  Miss Bowler strode over to her. “What exactly do you think you’re doing, Miss McCloud?”

  “I won’t be picking a sport,” said Ebony matter-of-factly.

  Miss Bowler looked flabbergasted. “Excuse me? And why ever not, missy?”

  Ebony’s lip curled with the ghost of a satisfied smile. “Because I don’t want to.”

  Everyone gasped. I couldn’t help but feel a little impressed. This girl had some nerve. You didn’t speak to a teacher like that – and certainly not the strict games teacher – unless you wanted to receive a deafening lecture and then be forced to clean all the green gunk out of the swimming pool.

  But as we all braced ourselves for the impact … nothing happened. Miss Bowler just blinked at her and then said, “Fine. But you’ll be writing essays this hour every week. Understand?” Then she stormed away, muttering under her breath.

  Ebony nodded, turned on her heel and left the hall. She was still smiling.

  “What exactly just happened back there?” Nadia asked.

  “I wouldn’t get away with that,” Penny grumbled.

  Ivy looked at me. “You have to admit, that was strange,” she said. “That’s the second time today that she’s just been let off the hook.”

  “I know.” I shuffled my feet on the floor. I was itching to get back into my ballet shoes. “It’s like …”

  “Like she’s got the teachers under a spell,” said Nadia from behind us, her eyes wide.

  Chapter Six

  IVY

  t was wonderful to be back in the ballet studio again. Madame Zelda had taken us down to where Miss Finch was waiting.

  “You’re older now, girls,” Miss Finch said. “Things are going to get harder. We’ll need you all to be on your best behaviour.”

  Madame Zelda nodded, tapping her long fingernails on her arm. “Discipline, discipline, discipline,” she said in her unusual accent. “Work hard, and you will reap the rewards.”

  It was harder. The two teachers pushed us to do moves that were more difficult than we’d ever done before. I could feel my muscles stretching to their limits, my joints clicking as I pulled them into unfamiliar positions.

  By the end of it, when we went into reverence and bowed and curtseyed to the teachers, I was exhausted. Scarlet and I sat down to unlace our shoes, breathless.

  I stared at my face in the mirror, my hair already falling out of my tight bun. Madame Zelda walked past. “Well done, Ivy,” she said, “and Scarlet. Both of you did your best today.”

  I smiled, but something about the sight of Madame Zelda made my thoughts return to Ebony and what Nadia had said. She did seem to have some sort of power over the teachers. But what that could be, I had no idea.

  Feeling drained after the long day, we made our way to Rookwood’s dining hall for supper. I hated to say it, but I was actually looking forward to the food. The air was filled with chatter, as always.

  We met Ariadne in the queue. Thankfully, she didn’t look any more bruised than usual so Muriel couldn’t have hurt her.

  “Nothing happened,” she said with a shrug. “Muriel just played hockey. I couldn’t believe it!”

  “I told you so,” Scarlet said. “I think she must have really changed. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Until she murders me in my sleep,” said Ariadne with a theatrical shudder. But I was pretty certain she was joking.

  I looked around at the rows of long tables. Both Muriel and Ebony appeared to have been placed in Mayhew House, judging by where they were sitting, and other new students were scattered about all over the place. At one end of all the tables, first years were gathering, trying their first-ever helpings of Rookwood’s mystery stew, their uniforms perfect and shiny and straight.

  We got our bowls and carried them on trays over to our table, where Madame Zelda was now sitting as the new head of Richmond House. I wasn’t surprised to see that she appeared to have brought her own food. Whatever she was eating certainly seemed to involve far more fresh vegetables than we were ever given.

  As we passed where the girls from Mayhew were sitting, I saw Ebony daintily scooping the stew with her spoon. She even managed to make eating look glamorous and faintly mysterious. I noticed that the first and second years were all staring at her, wide-eyed and whispering.

  Muriel, on the other hand, was drawing no attention at all. She was sitting alone, not talking to anyone. She waved at Ariadne as we walked by, and then went back to her dinner.

  “It seems so strange to think that she bullied you. What did she actually do?” Scarlet asked as we got to our table.

  “Scarlet!” I said. “Ariadne probably doesn’t want to talk about that.”

  Ariadne sighed. “No, it’s all right. I haven’t explained much about it, really.”

  Scarlet waved a fork at her. “Go on,” she said. We were sitting far enough away from any of the teachers, so we could speak freely.

  “She was truly horrible,” Ariadne began. “Everyone at Hightower was afraid of her. Except for her gang, of course.”

  “Hightower?” I asked, in between mouthfuls.

  “Hightower School for Girls. Where I was before.” Her eyes glazed over with thoughts of the past. “I loved it there, at first. Before I met Muriel Witherspoon.” She took a deep breath. “It only took her a day to give me a whole list of nasty nicknames. And then she just wouldn’t stop picking on me. She would take my things and try to hurt me any time she got a chance.”

  “Sounds like a few people I know,” Scarlet said through a mouthful of stew.

  “Oh yes,” said Ariadne, “but that was just the start of it. She formed this secret club called the Crow Club that met in this shed out by the playing fields. It was a bit like the Whispers, except it only existed so she could be horrible to people.” The Whispers was the secret society of past pupils that our mother had belonged to. It had been quite the opposite of this Crow Club, though – they had actually tried to expose the corruption in the school and protect the other students.

  Ariadne frowned at the table as she continued explaining. “They spread rumours all the time. They wouldn’t let me into the club because they said I was a ‘goody two-shoes’. And then they told everyone … well, I don’t want to say because it was just too horrible.”

  “And that’s when you burned down the shed?” I asked, remembering how Ariadne had been expelled.

  She nodded slowly. “I was just so sick of it. They were making
my life a misery!”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” said Scarlet. “I’m not exactly the queen of self-restraint when it comes to bullies, am I?” She grinned, and we grinned back at her.

  “Freaks!” I heard a quiet voice say by my ear. But … it sounded friendly. And familiar.

  I turned to see Rose standing beside me, with her empty tray.

  “Oh yes!” Scarlet said with a grin. “Freaks together! That’s us, isn’t it?”

  Rose grinned. When we’d had quite the adventure in the summer, we’d reassured Rose that she wasn’t alone in being an outsider. She may have been locked in an asylum and plagued by nasty relatives, but we knew all about that too.

  “Nice to see you again, Rose,” I said.

  She nodded. She didn’t talk a lot and she chose her words carefully.

  “Everything all right?” Scarlet asked. “No more rogue relatives bothering you?” I shuddered. Rose’s cousin had nearly got us killed in the process of trying to steal her inheritance.

  Rose nodded again. “I got a lawyer,” she said in her voice that was barely above a whisper. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

  At that point, Mrs Knight appeared and began hovering around our table. “Good evening, girls,” she said. “Is all well over here in Richmond?”

  “Wonderful, thank you,” said Madame Zelda, twirling a lettuce leaf with her fork. And it was true – everyone did seem to be behaving so far, which was quite unusual for our table. Madame Zelda was certainly a bit more intimidating than Mrs Knight, which helped. I got the impression she wanted the headmistress to go away.

  “Oh good, good,” Mrs Knight said. She walked over to where we were sitting. “Staying out of trouble, girls?”

  “Of course,” said Scarlet, batting her eyelashes comically. I nearly snorted my drink out of my nose. Rose laughed and walked away to join the back of the dinner queue.

  “Ah,” said the headmistress. “I hope you will continue to keep an eye on Rose.”

  “Is she allowed to stay now, Miss?” Ariadne asked. After all, Rose hadn’t always been a pupil at Rookwood.

  Mrs Knight smiled and rubbed her sleeves. “Oh yes. We were able to secure some of Rose’s inheritance to pay for her to be here full time. She’ll be joining some lessons as well. Not all of them straight away, mind. That might be too much. She’s had a tough time.”

  “That’s so kind of you, Miss,” I said, and I meant it. I couldn’t imagine our former headteachers showing any sort of compassion for a student.

  Mrs Knight blushed. “Oh, it’s nothing. Right, girls, I mean it – you’ll stay out of trouble this term, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Miss,” we chorused. I hoped we meant that.

  When we’d finished (and Ariadne had gone back for a second helping of tinned peaches in custard, which was admittedly unusually nice for Rookwood), we picked up our trays to take them away.

  We passed Ariadne’s former roommates, who were from the year below us, and were all sitting together.

  They all waved. “Hello, Ariadne!” they called out in unison.

  I recognised the girl who had become the unofficial leader of the group; she was Agatha, who had a bird’s nest of frizzy brown hair and loved to be in charge. “Psst,” she hissed, leaning forward. “Have you seen that new girl, Ebony McCloud?”

  “Oh yes,” Scarlet replied.

  “She’s certainly … interesting,” Ariadne said politely.

  Agatha’s eyes slid across the room, as if she were checking for spies. Then she leant across the table again. “We heard she’s a witch!”

  The other girls all nodded, wide-eyed and serious.

  Ariadne paused. “Really?”

  Scarlet looked at them incredulously. “A witch? As in … pointy hats and broomsticks and cauldrons?”

  “Oh yes,” said Evelyn, the red-haired one. “All of that. And she can do spells.”

  “Isn’t it exciting?” said another of them, Bonnie, her bright eyes sparkling. “Do you think she’ll teach us?”

  “She can probably teach you how to be even more weird than you lot already are,” Scarlet said, but they didn’t seem to notice. The rumour mill was in full flow.

  “Do you think she can make potions? Maybe she’d make a love potion for me …”

  “I bet she can see the future!”

  “If we look in her window at night we can see if she transforms into a bat!”

  Wordlessly, we backed away. Ariadne’s old roommates were a little intense once they got an idea in their heads.

  “Ebony’s certainly strange,” I said, as I scraped my bowl clean. “But where can they have got this idea from?”

  Ariadne wrinkled her nose, though whether it was at the food slops or at her friends’ gossip I wasn’t sure. “Who knows?” she said.

  Scarlet frowned. “I think they believe anything anyone tells them. I think she’s just eccentric, that’s all.”

  I nodded in agreement. It wasn’t surprising that Ebony was a little strange – who wasn’t, at Rookwood?

  But as I walked past her, with her hair the colour of the night sky and her eyes grey as storm clouds, I began to wonder if perhaps there was more to her than met the eye.

  Chapter Seven

  SCARLET

  t was our first night back at Rookwood, and it didn’t take long for trouble to find us.

  We’d unpacked and were heading to the bathrooms to get ready for bed. An hour or so earlier, Ariadne had sloped off to her dorm with Muriel.

  The lavatories were packed, filled with girls jostling to get to the mirrors and brush their teeth. As we waited at the back, Matron came in and whistled. “One at a time, you lot! The sinks aren’t going anywhere!” She left again, but the chaos didn’t improve by much. Some sort of queue began to form behind each sink, but it was messy.

  We waved to Ariadne, who was on the other side of the crush. Muriel was there too, her beanpole legs making her stand head and shoulders above most of the other girls. She was staring at her Rookwood regulation toothbrush, looking unimpressed.

  But everything changed when Ebony walked in.

  The crowds parted like she was Moses. She had that enigmatic smile on her face as she glided along. She walked straight up to where Muriel was standing and said, “I’m going to use this mirror.”

  Muriel stopped, the toothbrush still in her mouth, and turned to look down at Ebony. Despite being smaller than Muriel, Ebony gave the impression she was eight feet tall.

  “Mmscuse me?” Muriel said around the toothbrush.

  “I said I’m going to use this one.” Ebony didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Everyone had gone silent and was staring at her. “Or …”

  Muriel spat a foamy mouthful into the sink. “Or what?”

  “Or you’ll regret getting in my way,” said Ebony. She tipped her head on one side. That smile wasn’t going anywhere. “The world has a way of punishing people who don’t do what I want.”

  Now, having heard about the fearsome Muriel from Ariadne, I assumed we were about to witness something dramatic. So of course I stood on tiptoe to get a better look.

  But to my surprise, Muriel just looked hurt. “Why?” she said. “I waited my turn. I’ll be done in a moment.”

  And then, as I watched, she turned, slipped on something and fell backwards into a heap on the floor. There were gasps. But no one moved.

  Ebony looked down at her. “I told you so,” she said. She stepped over Muriel and began brushing her silky hair in the mirror and humming something. It was a tune I didn’t recognise. It sounded almost like a nursery rhyme.

  I didn’t like what I had seen one bit.

  How did that happen? I wondered. There was a moment when there was no sound in the bathroom but the strange humming. And then a second later, Muriel sat up and choked back a sob. It was as if there had been a spell that had just been broken, and everyone started talking again.

  I frowned and began shoving my way ove
r to the sinks. “Come on,” I said “Are none of you going to help her up?” I reached down. Muriel reluctantly took my hand and climbed up unsteadily. She rubbed her bruised legs and glared at Ebony. And without a word, she ran into the corridor.

  I didn’t know what Ebony was playing at, but she was reminding me uncomfortably of our old enemy Violet – or at least, how vile Violet had been in our first year. The sort of person who thought they were better than everyone else and ordered them around. And people were just letting her get away with it!

  I stood beside her, hands on my hips, while she preened. “What did you do that for, Ebony?” I asked.

  She just blinked at me, and then she leant forward and whispered one word: “Power.”

  “What?” I looked around at the other girls to see if they were listening, but everyone had moved on to something else. It was as though the events of the past few minutes had evaporated from their minds.

  “Power,” she repeated. “Some of us have it …” She looked towards the door. “Some of us don’t.” And then she turned back to the mirror and carried on humming that same song.

  “Right, well,” I muttered. “Perhaps you could use some of that power to stop being a nasty piece of work.”

  She ignored me.

  Ariadne pushed through and stood next to me. “I should … I should go and see if Muriel’s all right,” she said.

  I was a little surprised, but not completely. No matter what Muriel had done to Ariadne in the past, they’d been getting on better and Ariadne was very forgiving – a good person at heart.

  I didn’t think I’d be able to say the same about Ebony.

  Ivy and I eventually managed to reach the sinks and get ourselves ready for bed, and then we headed back to room thirteen. I had to admit I was a little relieved not to run into Ebony again. Something about her just wasn’t quite right.

  Getting under the sheets was the strangest feeling after being away from Rookwood for so long. Our beds had been made with hospital corners as usual, meaning I had to untuck the whole thing before I could actually climb into it. But once I was lying down, I had to admit … it almost felt like home. More than anywhere else did, anyway.