“File a protest afterwards,” Emily told her. The idea Lillian could have stopped her searching the dorm was absurd, but it wouldn’t stop her peers from believing it. “It’ll help, later.”
“I doubt it,” Lillian said. “But thank you anyway.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
EMILY HAD NEVER LIKED DORMS.
Whitehall had rooms, even for junior students. Sharing with one or two other girls was difficult, in her experience, but vastly superior to a dorm. There was no privacy in a dorm, no way to escape one’s dormmates unless one wrapped the curtains around the bed and hid. She had been able to come to an understanding with her roommates, at Whitehall, but it was a great deal harder to share space with nine other girls. It hadn’t been remotely easy at Mountaintop, even though she’d had her reputation to give her some protection.
She stood in the doorway and allowed her eyes to slowly traverse the room. Ten poster beds, each with the curtains drawn back; ten wardrobes beside the beds and, if she was any judge, drawers under the beds as well. She reached out with her senses, picking up a handful of complicated privacy charms. Emily wasn’t surprised. Students did everything in their power to scrape out what little privacy they could. She would be surprised if the beds and drawers weren’t booby trapped. It was what students had done at both Whitehall and Mountaintop.
Lillian stepped up behind her. “That’s my bed,” she said, pointing to the bed nearest the door. “And that’s...”
Emily listened, silently noting that Dionne and her two cronies had snatched the beds furthest from the entrance and closest to the bathrooms. They’d probably agreed to it beforehand and moved in before anyone else could get there, although it was unlikely that any of their groupies would have stood in their way. If Lillian had taken one of the prime beds, she would probably have been harassed until she decided to give it up. Emily glanced at Lillian’s bed, then the bed next to it. She didn’t have to be an expert to tell the bedding was of finer make on the second bed. Laughter claimed the students were equals, but - just like Whitehall and Mountaintop - some students were more equal than others.
“Thanks,” Emily said, when Lillian had finished. “Do you want to go to the library? Or somewhere else?”
Lillian nodded, biting her lip. She’d be in real trouble if any of her dormmates discovered she’d not only let Emily into the room, but also pointed out their beds. Emily scowled. It wasn’t remotely fair - Lillian could hardly have kept Emily out - but who’d care about that? They’d use it to distract attention from their earlier crimes... Emily pointed to the door, then watched as Lillian fled. Hopefully, no one would ever realize what she’d done. Her next set of dormmates might be understanding, but they would still distrust her.
Emily closed the door and put a ward on it to alert her if anyone came too close, then paced down the center of the room. The privacy wards were good, easily good enough to keep out most students. Anyone who did manage to break them would have real trouble putting them back together again, providing a warning that someone had been poking through the caster’s bedding. Emily frowned as she reached Dionne’s bed and peered through the wards. The bedding was of the highest quality, complete with family sigil. She wondered, idly, how Dionne had managed to get away with bringing it.
Family influence, probably, Emily thought. Or a simple bribe.
The window appeared open, although a cluster of wards shimmered around the edge to keep students from simply flying into the open air. Emily leaned forward and peered into the distance. The dorm overlooked Pendle, the town seemingly untouched by the events of the last few weeks. It was easy to feel as though she was looking down on the town, as if the town were nothing more than a model... she couldn’t see people walking on the streets or heading up or down the mountains. She tested the wards and discovered it was fairly easy to push them open, if one was keyed into the wards. Dionne and her dormmates probably weren't. No wonder they’d used the secret passageway. Even if they did manage to get through the wards, they couldn’t avoid setting off the alarms.
She glanced into the washroom - a collection of showers, toilets and sinks - and then turned her attention back to Dionne’s bed. It was hard to shake the feeling she was doing something wrong as she probed the wards. She’d spent six years in boarding school. Intruding on someone’s privacy was a jerk move, although - her lips quirked - she knew plenty of students, male and female alike, who did it anyway. The staff quietly encouraged it, on the grounds it inspired the students to study newer and better ways of erecting and breaking wards. Emily grimaced. She’d never agreed with that logic.
Dionne had done a good job, she acknowledged sourly. There were freeze spells and change spells and a particularly nasty hypnotic compulsion that would have severely embarrassed anyone who managed to get through the first lines of defense. Emily hadn’t wrapped so many nasty surprises around her bed at Whitehall, although she’d had the advantage of largely trusting her roommates. She carefully untangled the spells, allowing them to dispel into the ether. Dionne’s parents would probably collect her possessions when they took her home. Before then... it didn’t matter. Emily was fairly sure Lillian wouldn’t try to steal them. She would be the only logical suspect.
Emily smiled as she undid the final ward, then stepped up to the bed and opened the wardrobe. Dionne had a cluster of finely-made dresses that looked a little too fancy for a school, including one designed to show off her cleavage and another intended to push out her breasts. Emily would never have dared to wear either of them, certainly not in a school. She pushed the dresses aside and poked through the rest of the wardrobe, uncovering a selection of school robes, long cloaks and headscarves. Dionne probably used them for flying lessons. She wouldn’t want her hair flapping loose in the breeze.
Probably, Emily thought, as she tapped the wooden floor. The space underneath the wardrobe felt hollow. I wonder...
She’d never been that good with her hands - her carpentry and needlework skills were pathetic - and it took her longer than it should to pry up the floor. There was nothing underneath, save for a layer of dust that had probably been there for years. The wardrobe itself was firmly fixed to the wall. Emily coughed as the dust billowed up, then sat back and carefully closed the floor up again. Dionne hadn’t hidden anything underneath the wardrobe, which meant... what? There was always something to hide. Emily had seen students do similar tricks at Whitehall.
Putting the thought out of her mind, Emily opened the drawer under the bed. A couple of spells snapped at her, including one too advanced for a normal student. Emily deflected it with an effort, then peered into the drawer. Dionne’s undergarments were as fine as her dresses, laid out in a pattern intended to conceal something. Emily frowned as she brushed them aside, unable to avoid the feeling she was doing something wrong. A handful of books with lurid covers were hidden under the undergarments. Emily bit off a giggle as she pulled one out and looked at it. Love and Magic. Frieda had read the same book, a couple of years ago. It was nothing more than fifty chapters of unrealistic sex. Emily opened the book to a random page and ran her eye down the text. A contortionist would have problems having sex like that without breaking bones. It was the last thing she would have expected Dionne to own.
I guess they’re not banned here, Emily thought, wryly. Whitehall had banned blue books years ago. She’d never thought to ask if Laughter had banned them too. Or... maybe there’s a reason she hid them.
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the books. They were laid out in a pattern... she shook her head as she realized it was designed to conceal something else, just like the undergarments she’d moved earlier. She poked through the lowest levels of the drawer and found two more books and a paper notebook, the latter practically dripping with privacy spells. Dionne had overdone it. In her desperation to keep the book concealed, she’d actually drawn attention to it instead. Emily picked up the notebook and carefully started to undo the spells. It wasn’t Dionne’s spellbook, she was sure. It was
something else.
She frowned as she rested the book on the bedding and opened it to the first page. Dionne had started to outline a rite... the notes insisted it was designed to summon Pendle! Emily blinked, then parsed the spellwork. It was immensely complex, an order of magnitude more complicated than anything she’d expected from a student. She’d have problems drawing up something similar and she had several years of extra tutoring... she let out a breath. The spell was just too complex. It looked as if Dionne had taken a number of different spells and woven them together, but it was just too complex to cast. Emily silently ran the calculations in her head. It would be difficult for a handful of trained and experienced magicians to cast the spell, even if they were used to working together. Emily doubted a handful of fifth-year students could even begin to cast the spell.
And they’d need one hell of a lot of power, she thought. The rite was practically designed to drain the casters dry. It could be tightened up in a dozen places, without... Emily felt her heart sink as she tried to trace the spellwork past a certain point. It became incoherent, as if there was no longer anything binding them together. How does this spell even work?
She sat back on her haunches and worked her way through the rest of the book. Jens hadn’t given Dionne the spells. An experienced charmsmith would have known how to prune the spell to best advantage... hell, an experienced magician would have been able to devise the spell from scratch or smooth out the sub-spells to avoid unpredictable effects or power demands that might cancel the spell halfway through. Jens really hadn’t been involved... Emily frowned. Dionne should have known better than to even start devising such a spell. She’d had five years of education detailing precisely why it was a bad idea.
She might be happier if it failed, Emily thought, as she put the notebook back on the bed and stared down at the open drawer. Who knows how Pendle will react to the modern world?
The thought bothered her. She’d met Lord Whitehall. He was an impressive man, but he hadn’t lived up to the legends. And... he’d been very different than the magicians she’d met in the modern era. Who knew how he’d cope with the future? It was hard to imagine Pendle not having the same problem, if she appeared in the modern era. If, of course, there was any truth to the story at all. It was very hard to believe.
Someone could put themselves in stasis for generations, Emily reminded herself. She’d done it herself. But they’d still be out of touch when they opened their eyes.
She shook her head. Dionne was delusional. There was no reason to believe Pendle would put Dionne and her cronies on top of the new world order. There was no reason to believe Pendle could even establish a new world order. Lord Whitehall had been powerful, but Emily knew she could have bested him in a fight. She’d had the advantage of nearly a thousand years of magical research and development. Pendle had been gone for over five hundred years, perhaps more. Dionne presumably knew more magic than Pendle had ever known existed. Did she think she could teach the most powerful witch of her generation? Or had she simply not thought it out very far?
Emily sighed as she read through the rest of the notebook, then searched the rest of the drawer and bedding. Dionne didn’t seem to have much of anything, beyond the notebook and the blue books. Emily had the odd feeling something was missing. The blue books might be embarrassing - it was odd to realize that Dionne, magical supremacist, had been reading a novel about a witch submitting to a manly man with muscles on his muscles - but hardly fatal. Perhaps she just read it for the articles... Emily snorted at the thought as she carefully repacked the drawer, taking care to ensure that nothing was hidden under the wooden paneling. Maybe she’d hidden something incriminating elsewhere. Laughter wasn’t as big as Whitehall, but it was still large enough to provide plenty of hiding places...
She sat on the bed and looked around. It was unlikely Dionne had trusted Bernadette and Hannalore with anything dangerous, or incriminating. In Emily’s experience, girl posses like Dionne’s were hardly based on mutual trust and respect. Dionne, Bernadette and Hannalore might have been pushed together by their families, in an alliance that might not last once they left school. Or they might be true companions... Emily shook her head. They just didn’t act like true companions. Anyone who spent most of her time putting the rest of the world down was almost certainly insecure, even if they didn’t want to admit it to themselves.
I’m missing something, she thought. Where...?
Her eyes wandered up the wardrobe. It was taller than she’d thought, too tall for her to reach the top. Dionne was actually shorter than Emily. She couldn’t hide something... Emily stood and cursed under her breath. Dionne could fly! She could just levitate up and hide something on top of the wardrobe. Emily levitated herself up and reached a hand into the gap. A spell snapped at her, sending an unpleasant jolt running through her fingers. Emily swore and poked further into the dark space. Her fingers touched a piece of parchment. She caught hold and pulled it into the light. A piece of chat parchment?
Emily blinked in confusion. Why would Dionne hide her chat parchment? Emily had seen Dionne using them in class, at least until Emily had offered her the flat choice between putting it away or having it confiscated. Chat parchments were charmed. The only people who could read them were the owners... her eyes narrowed as she looked at the parchment. It looked as though it had been torn from a book...
A surge of magic ran through the parchment. Emily recoiled as the spell crashed into her mind. It felt as if someone were trying to redirect her thoughts in an impossible direction... she stumbled, her levitation spell starting to fail as she lost her grip on the magic. She dropped the parchment and hastily lowered herself to the floor, then gingerly reached out to study the parchment. A complex spell was worked into the sheet. It wouldn’t have been so bad, she realized numbly, if it hadn’t tried to push her in the wrong direction. And there were threads of magic reaching out in all directions...
She stared as understanding clicked. The intruder hadn’t stolen anything. She’d put something in. A book, perhaps. The parchment looked to have been torn from a book. The faded writing on the far side looked like something from a textbook. Someone had turned a book into an oversized piece of chat parchment, then concealed it within the school. The charms were so subtle, so aligned with the school’s wards, that they would be nearly impossible to detect. And...
Her blood ran cold as she traced the threads of magic. She’d seen something similar in Beneficence - she’d used something similar in Alexis - but this... this was different. Someone had taken her concept and used it to manipulate Dionne... she shuddered, feeling sick. She’d been able to resist because the magic wanted her to turn against everything she held dear, but Dionne didn’t have that edge. And the threads suggested that nearly every girl in the dorm had a piece of similar parchment. Lillian was the only exception.
Emily closed her eyes and carefully traced the strand of magic. It was cruder than the early chat parchments Aloha had designed, years ago, but she supposed it was carrying more than scribbled text. And it was outdated. The intruder had entered the school four years ago. Someone had taken the concept, devised a way to weaponize it and started a plan well before anyone had realized the danger. Four years... who the hell had it been?
She shivered. And if the girls have been affected, the teachers might have been affected, too.
Her mind raced. Who could she trust? No one. Duchene and her staff had been close to the charmed book... who knew if they’d been affected? Damia had staunchly denied even the possibility that something might be wrong, that someone might be manipulating the students. Was it just stubbornness, or something more sinister? And...
I can’t talk to anyone, she thought. And it’s just a matter of time before whoever’s fiddling with the chat parchments realizes what’s happened.
She stood and strode to the window. She couldn’t trust anyone. She didn’t even dare leave a note. And... whoever was behind the mad scheme had to be stopped. Whatever they were do
ing, they had to be stopped. They might have sensed her touching the parchment. There was no time to call Lady Barb or Void or someone to help. She peered into the distance, towards Pendle. The thread of magic seemed to be pulling her towards the town. The manipulator, whoever he was, had to be there. Waiting.
I have to get there quickly, Emily thought. And I’m going to have to fly.
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE AIR FELT COLD AS EMILY flew towards the town, gusts of wind whipping against her bare face or slipping up her dress as if the air itself wanted her to stop and land. She felt the magic whirling around her, preparing a handful of spells in case the flying magic suddenly destabilized or stopped. If the manipulator kept an eye on the chat parchment - she had no way to know how many pieces of parchment were loose in the school - he might see her coming. It would be ironic indeed, she supposed sourly, if she wound up dangling from her own petard.
Whoever did this used my tricks, she thought. It was maddening. She knew from grim experience - and historical awareness - how easy it was for someone to take a concept and build on it, or weaponize it, but it was still irritating. And they might even manage to blame me for it, too.
She saw people glancing up at her as she flew over the town. There were fewer people on the streets than she’d expected, even though the witches were confined to the castle. It struck her they could probably look up her dress... she muttered a hasty charm to ensure they couldn’t see anything as she followed the thread towards the edge of town. She couldn’t be sure - everything looked different from overhead - but it looked familiar. She’d been there before, with... Mitch, the boy who’d been hit with a love spell. She cursed under her breath as she dropped to the ground, bracing herself for an attack that didn’t come. Were Mitch and his family somehow tied into the whole scheme? Or was it just a wild coincidence?
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