by Katie Cross
“Miss Mabel killed Mama to make me angry,” I said. “Or to weaken my father. Or because she’s cruel and vile. I don’t know her real reason, but she murdered her with magic.”
Priscilla’s eyes widened. “And you saw?”
I nodded, feeling the familiar tug in my chest that meant my powers were awakening again. “Mama fell into my arms.”
A long silence filled the room, and I realized that Priscilla didn’t know what to say.
“My powers spiraled out of control last year,” I said, filling the strange vacuum with words, hoping it would somehow lead out of this conversation. “Miss Mabel came back and wanted me to kill my father, so I learned sword fighting to help me control my emotions.”
“Then you fought Miss Mabel at the Ball,” Priscilla said. “I remember reading about that in the Chatterer.”
“And won,” I added with a crooked grin to break the sudden strain in the air. To my surprise, she returned it. Perhaps Priscilla wasn’t so bad. A bit stiff and circumspect, but not nearly as haughty as she used to be.
“Was Miss Mabel terrible as a teacher?” Priscilla asked. “She must have been frightening.”
I thought of the day Miss Mabel cursed me for hours on end, the look in her eyes when she forced me to sign an unknown binding, the moment she attacked and murdered the High Priestess, and the expression on her face when she refused to remove the curse from my grandmother.
“She wasn’t the worst teacher,” I whispered. “When she wasn’t being sadistic and crazy. In fact, I learned a lot from her. A lot more than I care to admit.”
“So many witches hate your father now that he’s High Priest,” Priscilla said, her forehead furrowing. “Even I’ve thought he’s a bit overzealous in his preparations for war because nothing has happened since Miss Mabel’s attack. The Western Network has been perfectly quiet. The Southern Network never does anything. But now that I’m at the castle, I can’t … I can’t help but wonder if he’s right. If we’re just in the calm before the storm.”
“It is,” I said, thinking of Mikhail’s refusal to answer our questions and Diego’s stubborn blindness to the truth. The beginnings of a perfect storm were already brewing. “Trust me.”
Priscilla stared into my eyes for so long that the edges of my vision began to blur.
“I think I do.”
“Where are Jade and Stephany?” I asked. “I’m surprised your friends never come to visit.”
Priscilla pressed her lips together. Her nostrils flared. “I don’t know,” she said. “We haven’t spoken since school closed.”
“Really?”
“Jade and Stephany weren’t really my friends. I didn’t realize it until after school ended.” She looked down at her lap, where her fingers fidgeted with a wrinkle in her dress. “Now that I’ve seen you and Leda and Camille and Michelle together, I’m beginning to wonder if I ever really had friends. Jade or Stephany wouldn’t have been nice to me the way Camille was, or made my favorite cake like Michelle did last week.”
I didn’t know what to say at first. “I suppose Leda isn’t making the best impression then,” I said with a wry smile. Priscilla didn’t return it.
“Actually, I don’t blame Leda,” she said with a furrow of her porcelain brow. “I wasn’t very nice to her at school. I guess I was a little jealous because she didn’t seem to care what other witches thought, and I did.” Her eyes met mine. “That’s what I learned the night I lost the Competition to you.”
“That you cared about what other witches thought?”
“Yes. Too much. At school I was so afraid of losing my friends that I did anything to keep them. I acted rudely to others to get a laugh. In the end, they deserted me anyway.”
She ended with a bitter sigh.
“Then they weren’t really your friends after all,” I said, feeling a rush of gratitude that Camille had been more welcoming than I. “We’re your friends now. Camille adores you, you know.”
Priscilla seemed skeptical, but I didn’t give her the chance to voice any doubts.
“Speaking of Camille, why aren’t you out on a double date with her and Brecken and some other Guardian they’ve rustled up? Sounds like she’s been determined to set you up with a Guardian that will ride you off into the sunset on a white horse just like her.”
Priscilla snorted, but seemed relieved at the change in topics. “I hate horses.”
Delighted with her sudden cheek, I tilted my head back and laughed. The muscles in her stiff shoulders seemed to unwind, and she cracked the smallest smile.
“You mean you don’t love courting Guardians?” I asked in fake shock.
“I hate it.”
I sobered. “Really?”
She nodded and let out a sigh, absently brushing her silky red hair over her shoulder. “The only reason I agree to go is because Camille gets so excited. Don’t get me wrong—I have fun with Camille, but most of the Guardians are just so …”
“Rough around the edges?”
She smiled a little. “Yes. I suppose so. Anyway, I don’t have the heart to tell Camille that I don’t intend to find a boyfriend.”
My eyebrows shot sky high. “Really? But you’re so pretty.”
Priscilla scowled. “There’s more to life than beauty, Bianca.”
“Right,” I said, retreating sheepishly. “I know, it’s just that …”
“You thought that because I’m pretty I would naturally want to court hundreds of witches and get married and have babies?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Well I don’t want any of that! I want a life. I want to make my own decisions. I want a career. No marriage is going to weigh me down, make me so miserable that I weep into my pillow every night because my husband never pays attention to me!”
Her voice rose to an almost hysterical pitch, and her cheeks flushed a bright red. I blinked.
“Priscilla, I didn’t mean to insinuate that you had to get married or—”
“I’m sorry,” she said, clipping me off again and turning away. Her fists clenched into white knuckles on her lap. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. It’s just … my parents are … they want to marry me off. My mother wants me to live the same life she’s living, only she’s miserable and unhappy and my father is a lech. I hate both of them. I won’t be like either one.”
Her passionate outburst made my heart pound. “Is that why you’re here at the castle as Miss Scarlett’s Assistant?”
“Yes. I hate teaching and Miss Scarlett frightens me. But it was my best opportunity to get as far away from Ashleigh as I could.” Her zeal began to fade. Her shoulders slumped, though I doubted Priscilla could really slouch the way I did. “And now I’m making my own life, even if it’s not what my parents wanted, or really what I wanted either.”
“Good for you,” I said. “I think you should do whatever makes you happy.”
Priscilla smiled with the edges of her lips. “Happy. Right.”
“What do you want if this isn’t it?” I asked, motioning around us as if the Witchery encompassed all of her deepest desires.
“Something more,” she said. “Something far from here. Something grand and exciting and … impossible. Anyway, thanks Bianca. And please don’t tell Camille that I … well … you know.”
I laughed. “I’m not going to tell her or else she’ll try to drag me along instead. Sorry, you’re stuck. By the way, what are you reading?”
I motioned to the old book on her lap.
“A book on transformation I found in the library. It’s pretty boring though.”
“Care to teach me a few tricks?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You want to learn transformation? Don’t you already know everything? You earned your marks as a first-year. What could I teach you?”
“Ha!” Did Priscilla feel intimidated by me? Beautiful, regal, intelligent Priscilla? The idea seemed absurd. “I only learned what I needed to survive. Besides, my papa taught me a lot of m
agic my whole life. That’s why I passed the marks.”
“Do you know transformation?” she asked, warming to the idea.
“I’m not terrible,” I said, demonstrating by turning a nearby book into a box of chocolates.
“You’re not good at it either,” she said. “You didn’t speak clearly, which is why the details of the transformation aren’t fully formed. See how half the box of chocolates is black and half is white? That’s because you didn’t really know what you were going to do.”
She set a sharp eye on me. I wondered if Miss Scarlett had started to rub off on her.
“Uh, no. I didn’t,” I admitted, reversing the spell. If Leda caught me messing with her volumes of knowledge, she’d pull my hair out. Priscilla watched me do a few more incantations to show the extent of my skill.
She closed her book. “You need help, Bianca. I could show you a few tips so your objects appear more authentic if you want.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll even transform you a box of chocolates to show my appreciation.”
“Don’t bother. Anyway, with a job as dangerous as yours, you could use it. Maybe it’ll save a life one day. Let’s get to work.”
I woke up a few days later in a cold sweat. No nightmare from Angelina had plagued me in the night, but dreams of Miss Mabel had. They didn’t terrorize me like the ones with Angelina’s voice did, so I knew my own mind was tormenting me this time.
I’m going to guess she’s giving you dreams, Miss Mabel had said. It’s her favorite method of communication, you know. She does love a sleeping, vulnerable mind to toy with. It feels terrible, doesn’t it? Being trapped and unable to get free.
I didn’t have the heart to tell Papa, who hadn’t even come back to the apartment to sleep the previous night. I hadn’t spoken with him in days thanks to all his meetings, though he’d sent me a few hasty notes with corny jokes scrawled on them. Since Papa was busy, and so was Stella, and my friends didn’t know the extent of my troubles, I knew of only one witch I could tell my secrets to.
I shot out of bed and changed, eager to get the burden off my chest, grabbing Mildred’s Resistance before transporting away.
Isadora lived in Letum Wood, on the edge of the tract of land that housed Miss Mabel’s School for Girls. While I harbored ill memories of the school, I couldn’t deny that good things had happened there as well. Without it, I would never have met Leda, Camille, and Michelle, nor lived past my seventeenth birthday. I forced aside the insistent thought that I wouldn’t have lost my mother either.
I arrived to find Isadora and Sanna standing on the porch, staring into the trees with distant expressions on their faces. The wintry air was thick with cold, and my breaths billowed out in gusts, so I was surprised to see the two aged sisters outside. They didn’t acknowledge me at first, so I waited on the path, my cloak heavy about my shoulders.
“It’s not very pretty out there, is it?” Isadora asked me.
By the tone of her voice, I knew she didn’t mean Letum Wood. Letum Wood had never been pretty in the winter. Though it thrived, lush and thick, in the summer, all traces of life deserted it in the cold months, leaving brown ivy strands and empty trees behind. I still thought it beautiful, in a strange, haunted kind of way.
“No, it’s not,” I said.
Isadora shifted her eyes to mine, and for the first time since I’d known her, she appeared very tired. Papa had mentioned before in idle conversation that he’d been working with Isadora often, seeking out future possibilities to plan ahead, and I wondered if all the talk of war was getting to her too.
“I like to stand in the cold sometimes,” she said with a sheepish smile that wrinkled her skin. “It helps me focus without distraction.”
“Strange,” Sanna muttered. “Very strange.”
“I’ll discuss our conversation with you later, Sanna,” Isadora said with the perfect manners she prized. “Thank you for coming.”
Sanna moved off the porch with a surly glare in my direction. I exhaled in relief when she hobbled into the woods, followed by a slinking shadow I couldn’t make out but knew to be a dragon.
“Come inside, Bianca,” Isadora said, whirling around. “We have much to talk about.”
Isadora sat down on a creaky rocking chair. “I’ve been expecting you for days now.”
I told her everything about the Book of Spells that had been bothering me: my visit to the Southern Covens, the article in the Chatterer archives that seemed to coincide with events in Mildred’s Resistance, and my suspicion that May concocted it all. Isadora listened with vague interest, mostly thinking, her lips pushed to one side.
“You brought Mildred’s Resistance? May I hold it? I’ve never actually read it myself, as Mildred didn’t want a lot of witches knowing the details. She held her privacy—what little she had—very close to her heart. Lavinia insisted on writing the book, however, so that future generations would know the whole story. She interviewed me after all the events died down, strange girl. Anyway, let’s see what you have.”
She skimmed the marked pages of Mildred’s Resistance. Once finished, she glanced at me over the top of the book with foggy eyes.
“It’s hardly proof, but it’s not entirely innocent either. Nothing with May was an accident.”
“Did you work with her very much?”
Isadora sucked in a deep breath. “A few times. She was a very intent witch, and her loyalties were clear to everyone but Evelyn, it seemed. She cared for no one, not even her daughter or granddaughter, more than she cared for herself. She displayed remarkable selfishness.”
“Sounds familiar. I was hoping you’d find more of a connection. It may not make much sense, but it seems so right to me.”
Isadora eyed me studiously. “This business about the Book of Spells isn’t all that’s on your mind, is it?”
My face flushed. I didn’t want to tell her about my nightmares, about my fear that Angelina really had connected with my mind, but I desperately wanted to at the same time. How could I explain the dreams without sounding mad?
“No,” I said. Hiding information from Isadora would be pointless. “It’s not the only reason I’m here. I need someone to confide in.”
Isadora stared at me with the most frank gaze I’d ever seen. Her eyes went distant, the way Leda’s occasionally did, and moments later she shook her head and seemed to come back to herself.
“Tell me,” she said with firm resolve, and relief made me weak. I spilled everything about the dreams I could remember. Their timing, the way I felt, the voice that spoke to me outside the dreams, and Miss Mabel’s troubling suggestion. Isadora faded in and out but listened without interruption.
“Oh my,” she whispered once I finished. “This trouble of yours extends far deeper than I thought.”
My stomach flipped. “What do you mean?”
“How often are you dreaming?”
“Infrequently. I can’t predict it.”
Isadora’s forehead wrinkled into deep lines. “I can see how they make you feel, though I can’t really see the details. There’s much … darkness associated with them in your mind. But I don’t think it’s all of your doing. Some of the darkness is your own fault, of course, but not all.”
“Angelina is causing the dreams, isn’t she? Just like Miss Mabel said.”
Isadora seemed to share my sentiment, or perhaps my thought, for she grimaced. “Yes, it certainly seems that way. It would have to be through Almorran magic, if the darkness means anything.”
“The darkness in my mind?”
“Yes, and no. There is darkness in your mind, but there’s also much darkness in the dreams you’ve had and … will have.”
Will have. So my time dreaming with Angelina wasn’t over, and by the apprehension in Isadora’s eyes, I feared it wouldn’t be for some time.
“I thought that none of our magic allows a witch to influence the mind of another,” I said. “That alone means it’s likely Almorran, doesn’t it? Which means May fo
und the Book of Spells in the Southern Covens, and it’s likely Angelina received it once May was executed.”
“It makes a likely case. Historically, some witches have proven themselves able to insert thoughts into others’ minds but not to control them the way Angelina does yours when you sleep. For example, I can perceive your feelings and personality traits and see possibilities for your future, but I can’t decipher your direct thoughts. The fact that she communicates with you in these dreams and influences you to not wake up means that she wields power over your mind, like Mabel suggested.”
“Will this change me in some way?” I asked, my breath escalating. “Angelina’s use of Almorran magic to influence my mind?”
“Change you? Not unless you allow it. Mark you, perhaps. Almorran magic is difficult to foresee and predict because it’s so unknown to us and because its power lies in the Almorran Master. The nuances of the magic change from Master to Master, though its fundamental elements remain the same.”
“The Almorran Master?”
“The most powerful witch within the sphere of Almorran magic,” she said, seeming awkward without a cup of tea in her hands. The cups lined the walls, as they always did, but she offered me no refreshment. “There has only been one Master at any given time. The aspirants to the position ascended through seven levels of skill, each of which required some horrible sacrifice to attain, to eventually become the Almorran Master through the spilling of familial blood.”
I swallowed. “I see.” Blood sacrifice. Seven levels of skill. Almorran Master. Familial blood.
“Almorran magic takes a long time to perfect because it draws on the magic of other witches. In order to do that, the practitioner must exercise remarkable power. Almorran magic influences, even gives power to, other witches that allow its control. But in the end, it always takes more from them than they receive. It’s selfish and evil. I believe that Angelina has, through time, ascended the seven levels and become the new Almorran Master.”