The Curse in the Candlelight

by Sophie Cleverly

  “But how do we do that without getting into trouble?” I wailed. The situation was becoming desperate. We were getting beaten at every turn.

  Scarlet threw the straw at the fire, but the wind caught it, sweeping it away across the grass. “Perhaps I could just talk to Ebony.”

  I gave her a look.

  “I will! I promise! No hitting or kicking or screaming. If I, or we, just talk to her, maybe we can find out what she really wants.”

  My twin had a point. I stood up. “All right. Let’s look for her. Come on.”

  We wandered aimlessly through the party, where the candles and turnip lanterns now shone brightly in the growing darkness. I began to realise that it was going to be difficult to find anyone in particular because everyone was essentially in disguise.

  There were also quite a lot of witches. Every way we turned, I saw black pointy hats. It was as if Ebony was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

  Some of them were Ebony’s followers as well. I saw Ethel whispering to Mary, both of them dressed as witches. I began to wonder if it was deliberate, to confuse us. But then it also seemed that witches were just a popular All Hallows’ Eve costume, anyway.

  We must have walked all the way round the field about three times. Just as I was beginning to feel frantic, I felt a gentle tug on my arm. I turned and saw Rose standing behind us.

  “Rose!” Scarlet said. “Have you seen Ebony?”

  Rose made a confused face and gestured around at everyone in their costumes. I realised what she meant quite quickly.

  “We think she was dressed as a witch, all in black,” I explained. “We just saw her burning Ariadne’s picture, and now Ariadne’s gone off upset. We thought if we could talk to her, then …”

  Rose’s quizzical expression deepened. She waved us nearer so that she could talk quietly. “Then I think I have seen her. She was taking Ariadne.”

  “Hold on a moment,” Scarlet said. “Taking her? As in dragging her, kicking and screaming?”

  Rose shook her head. “I would have told someone if it had been like that. They were just walking away.”

  “Did you see where they went next?” I asked.

  Rose’s head shook again. “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Thank you.”

  As Rose got back into the queue for the toffee apples, I turned to my twin. “Do you think Ariadne’s decided to try and talk to Ebony by herself then?”

  Scarlet frowned. “She must have done. Damn!”

  I had to agree with Scarlet’s cursing. Our best friend had just been threatened by a witch on Halloween and then wandered off into the darkness with her, alone. On the whole, “damn” might have been an understatement.

  We had to find Ariadne. And fast.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  SCARLET

  he search was really on now. We started asking people if they’d seen a girl dressed as a lion, but they either said no or ignored us. I muttered angrily at them as we moved on past. Didn’t they realise how important this was?

  We found Miss Finch sitting near the entrance, who had evidently just arrived at the party, since we hadn’t seen her on her other rounds. She was wearing a long white dress, with a white-powdered face and dark make-up round her eyes. She had even painted her walking stick white and wrapped it in bandages.

  She smiled as we approached. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Well, that was the idea, anyway.”

  Ivy managed a weak smile. “You make a great ghost, Miss.”

  “Thank you,” Miss Finch replied. “I wanted to come as the scariest thing I could imagine, but I didn’t think turning up dressed as my mother would go down too well. So a ghost it was.”

  “Miss,” I jumped in, “have you seen Ariadne? Or Ebony McCloud?”

  Miss Finch thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. Perhaps you can ask Mr McCloud? He’s just over there, talking to Mrs Knight.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Ivy. Maybe this was our chance to get some information. “That’s great, Miss, thank you!”

  Madame Zelda was approaching Miss Finch with a mug of tea, but we darted round her and headed for the headmistress and Ebony’s father.

  As the crowds parted, I could see them standing together near the apple-bobbing tub. The ground surrounding it was muddy with all the splashed water, but Mrs Knight had led him to a fresh patch of grass.

  I could tell who he was straight away. He was tall and his hair was as dark as Ebony’s, as was his perfectly trimmed moustache and beard. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit with red detailing that I was certain Aunt Sara would have marvelled over.

  We got closer and Ivy was about to approach him, but I suddenly had other ideas and held her back. “Let’s give it a moment. We should listen,” I hissed.

  Mrs Knight was clearly buttering him up. “… You’re so generous, Mr McCloud, to give us a contribution for all this.”

  “It was nothing at all,” he said with a warm smile. “Nothing’s too much for my wee girl. She loved all these traditions back home. Where has she got to?”

  “I expect she’s off having fun,” Mrs Knight said, a little dismissively. I noticed she had discarded her paper beak and looked like she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t dressed as an owl. “How are you getting on in Fairbank?”

  “Oh, marvellously,” he replied. He took a sip of his drink, which looked rather like whisky. “It’s always been a dream of mine to own a theatre and the Royal is such a treasure.”

  I looked at Ivy. He owns that theatre? It was where our ballet recital had taken place the year before. Not that we’d taken part in it, because we’d been busy fighting off an evil headmistress, but that was another story.

  “I do love the theatre,” said Mrs Knight. I thought she was hamming it up a bit. “What have you put on?”

  Mr McCloud smiled. “I worked my way up from being a magician in a music hall, but Shakespeare is where my heart lies. So of course, the first play had to be The Scottish Play. They say it’s bad luck, but not for us it seems. Sold out every night!”

  Ivy gasped.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “He means Macbeth,” she replied in hushed tones. “It’s bad luck to say the title. But …” Her sentence trailed off, but I followed it. Magic and Macbeth. Two things that explained a lot about Ebony.

  Mrs Knight put her hand on his arm. “I hope Ebony will be a wonderful young actress, then. Perhaps we shall have her for the lead in the school play.”

  “Oh yes,” Ebony’s father smiled again, but it seemed a little sad. “I hope so too; she’s grown up around the theatre. It’s in her blood.”

  I was beginning to build up a picture. Young Ebony, growing up around her father, seeing plays and magical performances, taking it all in. Was that where she was getting this from?

  “You seem a little unsure,” Mrs Knight said gently.

  “Well,” he said, staring down into the glass of honey-coloured liquid. “I worry about her. I think she wants to be an actress, but she’s very shy and reserved.”

  I blinked. Ebony? Shy and reserved? Was he talking about the same girl?

  “A lot of the time she won’t leave her room, the poor wee thing,” he continued. “That’s why I got her that cat. It’s a companion for her, you see.”

  At this point the picture of Ebony was becoming a ten-foot painting.

  “I expect that’s where she’ll be,” he continued. “She loves All Hallows’ Eve, but I expect she’ll have had enough by now. I’ll go up and find her later.”

  I grabbed Ivy and began to drag her away.

  “What is it?” she hissed.

  “We have to go and look in Ebony’s room,” I said as I pulled her through the crowds. “I’m beginning to think she might not be our witch.”

  Inside the school, it was deathly quiet. Nobody wanted to miss the chance to have a bit of fun at Rookwood. The hallways were empty and we swept through them and up the stairs like ghosts.
/>
  We stopped outside Ebony’s door.

  “Should we knock?” Ivy whispered.

  I shook my head. I had a better idea. The element of surprise and all that. I wrenched open the door …

  And there was Ebony, sitting alone, just as her father had said she would be.

  But she wasn’t sitting on the bed I’d expected, the one draped with black embroidery. No, Ebony McCloud was lounging on the regular bed, reading a book and hugging the teddy bear in the pink frilly dress. Her cat was curled up on her feet, snoozing.

  Most importantly, though, she wasn’t dressed as a witch. She was just wearing her nightgown.

  For a moment, we were too stunned to say anything. And so was she. She just sat there, wide-eyed and white, and soon a flush of embarrassment rushed to her cheeks. She slowly let go of the teddy.

  The words eventually came to my lips. “You’ve never had a roommate, have you?”

  Her mouth flapped open and closed as if she were about to argue, but she’d clearly been caught red- (or possibly pink-) handed. “No,” she said quietly.

  We’d got her. I stepped into the room, pulled Ivy in and shut the door behind me. The window was open a crack, letting in some of the chilly night air. “Right,” I said. “We know this is all an act. You’re not as confident and self-assured as we thought you were. We just heard it from your father and we can see it quite plainly right here.” I gestured at her. “Now I’m going to give you five minutes to explain to us why you’re doing it.”

  Ebony folded her arms, although she was a little shaky. “Why should I?”

  Ivy pointed at her. “Because our friend has just been threatened and possibly kidnapped by someone dressed as a witch, and we need to get to the bottom of this mess!”

  I nodded, feeling a slight spark of happiness at seeing my twin back me up so brilliantly. “And,” I added, snatching the teddy bear from Ebony, “because if you don’t, I’m going to parade Mr Fluffy here around the school and tell everyone that you’re a total fraud!”

  With an exasperated sigh, Ebony sat forward and put her head in her hands. Her cat yawned, stretched and moved to a different corner of the bed, paying us no attention. Eventually, Ebony looked up again. “All right,” she said. “Fine. I’ll explain.”

  “This had better be good,” I said.

  She glared up at me. “I’m no witch. I can’t do curses. I made it all up. Is that what you want to hear?”

  I waved my hand, telling her to go on. We needed more.

  I could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek. “I’ve never been to school before. I used to travel around with my papa, while he played in different places in Scotland. He taught me about acting and magic, how to read, how to count numbers and sell tickets.” She took a deep breath. “And I liked it that way. But since we moved here and he bought that theatre, he decided I ought to get a proper education.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Now where have I heard that before? I could understand that much.

  “I didn’t want to come to school,” she continued. “I begged and cried. But he thought it was best for me. I tried my best at the entrance exam because I wanted to make him proud. I thought I had no choice. But then, after the exam … I met someone that day. We got talking. And when I told them I didn’t want to stay at Rookwood, they started telling me about this plan they had, and said that all it needed was someone who could perform …” She trailed off, looking unsure.

  “Who?” I asked. “Who did you meet?”

  She shook her head and ignored the question. “They said they would give me instructions and that if I followed them, the school would soon want to kick me out and I could go back home. Father had told me I needed to make new friends and I felt so lucky to have found someone who wanted me to do what I loved. And at first, it was fun. I got to play this role and it felt right.” She moved her hand from her book and now we could see that she was reading Macbeth.

  I looked at my twin. How appropriate, I mouthed.

  Ebony must have read my lips. “Father loves books about witchcraft and magic,” she said. “He lends them to me. That was another fun part.”

  Ivy turned back to her. “But then soon it wasn’t fun any more?” She knew how this story went.

  “Well,” Ebony stared at the floor for a moment. “It was still quite fun. But I was beginning to worry that people would get hurt. And more than that … it’s tiring, performing all the time. No one here is really my friend. They all just want me to be like a character I made up.”

  “Not to mention that it hasn’t worked,” I said, more than a little derisively. “You haven’t been kicked out. Quite the opposite, in fact. The teachers don’t think you can put a foot wrong.”

  Ivy nodded. “We thought they were under your spell.”

  Ebony laughed. “A spell on the teachers? That’s a joke. “That’s not what happened. That, at least, is Papa’s fault,” she explained, reaching out to stroke her cat, who had splayed himself out across the covers. “How was I to know that he’d start making donations? He heard the school was in trouble and wanted to help.”

  Aha, I thought to myself, looking at my twin. So I’d been right about that at least. “So if you’re not really a witch,” I said, “then who’s the one behind this?” I asked. Time was running out. “Who’s the one in the witch costume?”

  “I can’t tell you!” she said desperately. “I can’t!”

  I racked my brains. Who had been around this whole time? Who had joined the school this year?

  And then I saw Ebony’s playing cards on her side table and a light suddenly went on in my mind.

  Who had previously had a vendetta against Ariadne? Who had been acting suspiciously? Who had a Joker card on them after we got tricked with the very same cards?

  “Muriel!” I cried. “It’s Muriel!”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  IVY

  could tell from the expression on Ebony’s face that Scarlet had hit the nail on the head.

  “Don’t tell her I told you anything,” she said desperately.

  “You’re afraid of her?” Scarlet asked.

  Ebony nodded, slowly and solemnly. It was sad to see her fall from grace like this, from being an elegant enchantress to a shy, scared girl. What exactly had Muriel done to her?

  “Look,” I said, “I know all about hiding behind a mask.” To make the point, I took the mask off my head. I knew well that sometimes people wore a mask for their own safety. “I had to pretend to be Scarlet once.”

  “It’s a long story,” Scarlet added.

  I went and sat behind Ebony. I knew we needed to get on her side if we were going to have any chance of finding Muriel and Ariadne. “You don’t need to hide any more. I know you don’t want to be at this school, but if you’re stuck here, then you need to be yourself and make real friends. It’s the only way to get through.” I felt a pang in my heart as I said that.

  “And if you really want to go home,” Scarlet said, sitting on the opposite bed, “you need to tell your father the truth. That’s your only chance. He obviously loves you.”

  Ebony stared at the floor, but I saw a flush of colour return to her cheeks. I think she knew we were right.

  “Tell us what Muriel is up to.” Scarlet met her eyes directly. “If we know, then maybe we can find our friend.”

  “We won’t let Muriel do anything to you,” I insisted.

  Midnight the cat stood up then and padded across the bed back to Ebony. He meowed at her inquisitively.

  “You too?” she said with a sigh. “All right. I’ll tell you what I know. But please, don’t tell her.”

  “We won’t.” I knew I had to jump on the opportunity. “What is going on?”

  “She told me …” Ebony rubbed her arm. “She told me that she’d been expelled from her last school after a snitch accused her of being the ringleader of a gang of bullies. She said that the snitch was expelled too, for burning down their clubhouse.”

  “Ariadne,
” I said. “And it was a shed, really.”

  Ebony nodded and stroked her cat. It seemed to calm her down a little. “Muriel is from a rich and important family, but they were furious with her for having to leave her school. They wanted to disown her completely, called her a stain on their reputation. In the end they sent her to live with some distant cousin in Fairbank. But … she never forgot what Ariadne had done to her. She wanted revenge. So she hatched this plan and she talked me into joining her.”

  “And you just went along with it all?” Scarlet asked.

  I gave her a look. We were supposed to be getting Ebony on side, not upsetting her.

  But Ebony seemed unfazed. “I did,” she said. “She made it all seem like a big joke, you see. This wonderful prank, convincing everyone that she was a victim of this ‘witch’, and that we’d be there laughing at how you’d all fallen for it. But the further I got, the more I realised she just wanted to hurt everyone – especially Ariadne.” She shut her eyes. “And by that point I was in too deep to stop.”

  “Did she threaten to do something to you?” I asked. “If you stopped, I mean?”

  Ebony gaped for a second, and then she nodded again.

  A cold breeze blew in from the open window, bringing a few autumn leaves in with it. One of them fluttered in the air for a second, like a bat.

  That was what brought the question to my mind. “If Muriel is responsible for this, then what happened with the curse we saw you put on her? She disappeared and came back hurt.”

  Ebony shrugged. “Smoke and mirrors.”

  “What?” Scarlet asked.

  Ebony’s stormy eyes flashed up to her. “It was all pretend. Acting. Stage make-up. I helped her. She went to a hiding place and then came back when everyone was sufficiently worried.”

  A hiding place … Perhaps that could be where she’d taken Ariadne!

  I stood up. “Where was it? Where did she hide?” Scarlet looked at me and I saw the realisation dawn in her eyes. This was our chance.