by Katie Cross
One by one, the Coven leaders stood and reported their business. Unemployment in one Coven. Disappearance of a farmer and his family in another. Notice of a runaway schoolboy. Parents dissatisfied with the education system. A deception spell gone awry. There were at least forty covens in the Network, but not all were represented tonight.
The High Priestess called on Miss Mabel. Instead of standing as the others did, she remained in her seat with a subtle gleam of defiance.
“The Eastern Letum Wood Coven has no issues to report,” Miss Mabel stated in a business-like tone. “I met with the lower leaders prior to coming. They voiced no concerns.”
The High Priestess’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, but she accepted it with a nod.
“Very well. Bickers Mill Coven …”
Darkness surrounded the school by the time I returned. The warm light of candles dancing in the windows illuminated the school, defying a black band of vapor that shielded Letum Wood.
“Thank you, Augustus,” I said in a weary voice as I exited the carriage. “Have a good night.”
He nodded and drove off, his eyes a bit bloodshot from his time at the pub if his jovial singing on the road home gave any indication. The carriage evaporated into the fog with the slow plod of the horse, leaving me alone. I stayed there, breathing in the night until the chill seeped through my clothes and forced me inside.
I slipped through the hall, absorbed with thoughts of my grandmother. An eagerness like I’d never known gripped me. I wanted the curse removed tonight, this moment. Yesterday, even. Better to spare her as much pain as I could.
Despite the thrill of exultant joy hovering under my skin, a heavy exhaustion weighed down my legs when I started up the spiral staircase. I slowed down. It was late. The grandfather clock gonged below, announcing eleven o’clock. A new black rug ran the length of the stairs, as did bunches of black ribbon wreaths the students must have made for a celebration. Samhain must be coming up soon.
Every floor I passed was quiet, the sounds of life reduced to subtle creaks and the quiet shuffles of last-minute bedtime rituals. I envied them and didn’t know why. Maybe it was because I wished to be asleep, my fatigued eyes drooping and weary.
Not yet. Grandmother awaited.
A single light illuminated the space underneath Miss Mabel’s door. I held my breath and stood on the landing, listening. The shuffle of two voices came from her private bedroom. A giggle, then a rakish growl.
The throaty tones of a man’s voice.
I quickly cast a concealment spell, intrigued. It fell over me in an icy rush. My body blended in with the background, becoming nothing more than floorboards and stone. As long as I stayed motionless, no one would see me. If I moved, they’d see ripples in the air, like heat waves. Once the spell was complete, I crept forward, pressing my back against the wall. It wasn’t long before Miss Mabel’s dulcet words met my ears.
“Oh, how you make me laugh!”
The same low growl repeated, followed by a chiding reprimand.
“Stop that,” she said. “I don’t want you drawing attention up here. Bianca will return any minute now. We can’t afford discovery, can we?”
Fabric rustled. My heart thudded in my chest, drumming out a frightened rhythm. Who was the man?
“Then tell me about the Esbat,” the unknown voice said. “Did I miss anything important?”
I didn’t know his voice. He must be a Coven leader if he had missed the Esbat.
“Nothing but the same old complaints. Mildred looked horrid in her dress. I don’t know how you put up with her every day.”
The puzzle pieces of this unknown mystery man began moving together like the slow movement of a clock.
Tick
“I try not to see her every day,” he said in a wry drawl. “Did your Assistant earn the mark?”
The eagerness in his voice sent a chill through my body.
“Of course,” Miss Mabel’s voice purred. “As if you ever doubted my judgment, Briton.”
Tock.
The High Priest. Miss Mabel was having an affair with the High Priest. My nails gripped the chinks in between stones in the wall, anchoring me, reminding me that I wasn’t imagining things.
“Did she really pass?” he asked.
Miss Mabel moved slightly, and her voice became easier to hear. She let out a long sigh, as if she savored every molecule of air.
“Yes, and that’s not the most exciting thing,” she said.
“What is?”
“She transported.”
My blood ran cold, like little spears of ice attacking from the inside, paralyzing every muscle in my body. She knew. I didn’t know how she’d discovered it, but she knew.
“A sixteen-year-old?”
Miss Mabel made a noise low in her throat.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“Believe it. I watched her. It’s how she avoided the Guardians at the very beginning, just as I thought. It was a last minute adjustment to my plan but a good one.”
The sound of pacing footsteps jolted me. I slid to the floor, my knees too weak to hold my body upright. This was not good. Not good at all. This evening was changing from bad to nightmare on a course I couldn’t stop. I’d never felt so helpless in my life.
Reckless. My desperation tonight made me reckless. Leda’s words haunted me.
Do you ever think before you act?
No, clearly I didn’t, and now I’d pay.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” he said.
“It proves she’s got courage, like I thought. Talent, too. She thinks quick on her feet. Her homework is atrocious, but her magic is strong. That’s what really counts.”
A silence fell that twisted my insides to shreds.
“She’s capable yes, but will she have enough power?” he asked.
“I think so. I think she has a great deal more power than she lets on,” Miss Mabel said in a voice I had to strain to hear. “Or knows about yet.”
“How do you know she’s strong enough for the task?”
“We’ll find out soon,” she said.
“What are you planning?”
“Nothing too extraordinary. I’m just going to test her a little, see if she can handle it.” An innocent tone, as if she spoke of summertime or flowers. My chest rose and fell in desperate gasps, making me lightheaded. I bowed my head into my knees and screwed my eyes shut, forcing my breathing to slow.
“Wonderful,” he said. I could tell he meant it. “How?”
“I’m going to see how much control she has over her power when she experiences intense emotions. Once we turn those on, the power doesn’t turn off.”
“Ah,” he said. “Pain?”
“No,” she scoffed. “Something infinitely stronger.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “You’re going to make her angry.”
“Yes,” she giggled. “Very angry.”
I pressed my fingertips to my lips to prevent them from emitting a horrified cry. The High Priest’s heavier steps followed. When I heard their voices again they were hushed, as if they spoke from an embrace. I could hear the individual words no more.
The sound of footsteps came from the spiral stairs, startling me. I shot to my feet, stumbling toward my bedroom with an out-of-my-mind pulse of fear. I had to get out of there, away from the suffocating evil of their words, away from the risk of getting caught.
Somehow in my hurry my foot caught on the loop of my bag. I bobbled, bouncing back and forth, trying to recover, but it only wrapped my ankles tighter together. My arms flailed as I reached for the wall to no avail. I shot forward, landing with a leaden thud, the floorboards skimming my face and chin.
The sound rang out through the attic, freezing time. The air was completely still. I held my breath.
Miss Mabel’s door creaked open, spilling a shaft of light onto my body.
Wasted
My lungs burned. Tears stung my eyes from the fall, threatening to drip
onto the floor. I didn’t risk looking at the rest of my body to make sure the spell held.
“Sorry to bother you this late, Mabel,” Miss Scarlett said. “I finished the paperwork for the third-years’ Network Mark applications. They want only your signature.”
It took all my control not to move when Miss Scarlett entered the attic, announcing herself with her inflexible voice. Her quiet footsteps were almost silent, as if she hovered just above the ground and only made the motions of walking to make it look real. My already sinking luck took on more water.
In only a few steps Miss Scarlett would trip over me.
Miss Mabel took another step forward. I felt the floorboard beneath my right foot shift from her weight.
“Did you fall, Scarlett?”
Her slow words and low tone made my heart plummet. Why hadn’t I just minded my own business and gone to bed? Instead, I was seconds away from discovery, sprawled on the floor like a rug.
“Yes,” Miss Scarlett stopped moving toward me. Her feet were so close it made my eyes cross. “I tripped on the stairs on my way up.”
I blinked. Had Miss Scarlett just lied?
There had been a noise that caught my attention before I fell, but the idea of Miss Scarlett tripping on a stair seemed ludicrous. I’d never seen her stiff, upright spine bend.
“I see,” Miss Mabel murmured with another step into the hallway. The floorboard groaned in protest as she stepped to the left of my foot. I didn’t need to see her face to know her eyes flickered around the room. The air felt so unfriendly I could almost smell her unease. “Are you sure? It seemed much closer than that.”
“Quite sure,” she said in a clipped tone, readjusting her shoulders as if fixing her dress would rebuff her embarrassment at being human like the rest of us. “It’s getting late. Here are the papers. I trust you’ll send them once you’re done. Please excuse me. There are a few first-years just below you that I heard giggling. I would like to remind them of the rules before they go to bed.”
I wondered if adhering the rules lent comfort to her ruffled pride.
Several scrolls tied in a bundle floated from Miss Scarlett’s hands. Another stretch of silence that seemed like an eternity. My heart would give me away, surely. Couldn’t they hear it slam against the floor?
“Good night, Scarlett,” Miss Mabel finally said.
Miss Scarlett was already on her way down the stairs but stopped to ask over her shoulder, “Did Bianca pass the Esbat mark?”
No, no, no! I wanted to scream. Any mention of me would make Miss Mabel suspicious over my delayed return.
“Yes,” Miss Mabel drawled. She hadn’t moved an inch. My lungs burned again. “She passed. She should have been home by now.”
Miss Scarlett nodded once.
“Good night, Mabel.”
She started down the stairs. Even after the last sign of her presence had faded, Miss Mabel remained, waiting. Finally, when I wasn’t sure I could stand it any longer, she shuffled backward. The light from the doorway slowly gathered together, narrowing into a thin stream that evaporated into black.
Had I imagined it, or did Miss Scarlett’s eyes meet mine when she walked down the stairs?
Exhausted, I pressed my cheek to the cold floor, let out a deep breath, and closed my eyes.
The night lasted several eternities, dragging every minute as if it were a heavy club. I willed morning to come. Maybe the light would shine, illuminating the blackest shadows, the midnight gargoyles that I could feel breathing down my neck in the darkness. When I slept, it was for moments, filled with dreams of the High Priest, Miss Mabel, and the High Priestess all standing over me, telling me my birthday came the next day.
I tossed and turned, wondering what the overheard conversation meant, replaying it all in my head, mixing it with my dreams. Miss Mabel’s giggle, the low voice of the High Priest, Miss Scarlett’s eyes on me as she left. Snatches of phrases haunted me like the wail of wraiths.
Powerful emotions.
Stronger than pain.
Very angry.
I hovered between consciousness and sleep, trapped in the realm of dreams that dragged me into the depths with the demons, the fear, the unknown. I knew I wasn’t awake, just as I wasn’t resting. I was stuck in the middle, unable to get out.
I jerked out of the clutch of the monsters with a gasp, tearing myself away.
Several seconds passed before I realized something had awoken me. Sweat coated my skin. My heart fluttered like the wings of a hummingbird; thin, thready, fast. The black lingered outside, but I knew it was closer to morning than midnight by the short chimes of the distant grandfather clock in the library.
A soft, almost imperceptible tap sounded on my door.
I sat up. “Who is it?” I whispered. It came again.
My heart stuttered when I scuttled out of bed, pulled open my door, and saw Leda and Camille huddled outside, casting nervous glances down the hall.
“What are you doing?”
Leda quieted me with a violent wave of her hand and motioned to Miss Mabel’s room with a jerk of her head. She grabbed Camille and shoved her inside. The moment I shut the door, Camille threw her arms around me.
“Are you all right?” she whispered without bothering to pull away, her cheek pressed to mine. “We’ve been so worried all night.”
Leda peeled her back.
“Give her some air, Camille. Why am I always pulling you off her? Camille is right, Bianca. It hasn’t looked good for you tonight,” she said, turning to me. “I thought we better come check on how the Esbat went.”
“What did you see?” I asked, breathless. Leda shrugged.
“Gray.”
I wasn’t sure if it was relief or fear that I felt in my stomach.
“Are you okay?” Camille insisted again, grabbing my hand with a comforting squeeze. “I’ve been so nervous for you all night! I couldn’t sleep. It’s good to see you here safe! I wanted to bring you some warm tea, but Leda said Miss Celia would be up soon.”
“Let’s hear it,” Leda said, her eyes on me.
“Better sit down,” I whispered, grateful beyond words that they had come. “It might take a while to explain.”
They listened without interruption. Camille sat down halfway through, her knees wobbly. By the time I finished, Leda stood at the window with her hands behind her back, her jaw tight.
“She’s rotten,” Camille whispered. “Wicked and rotten, and I can’t believe it.”
“I can,” Leda muttered.
“What do you think Miss Mabel is going to do?”
A dark feeling crept over me just thinking about it, as if saying her name brought the fog from Letum Wood into my room.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “It could be anything.”
“She wants to make you angry,” Camille whispered, her face scrunched in thought. “That means she’ll do something bad, or try to take something away that means a lot to you.”
“You’re a big comfort,” I muttered.
I didn’t like the direction she took because I had already been there myself. Leda leaned back against the wall, her arms folded across her chest. Her white nightgown peeked out from beneath her ratty scarlet robe. The big toe of her left foot stuck out from a slipper that looked too small by several sizes.
“Do you think she’ll stop you from going to the Samhain Festival?” Camille asked. “It’s tomorrow. I’d be angry if she tried to stop me from going, especially with all the food that’s going to be there. Miss Celia is making pumpkin frosting for her cinnamon buns.”
Attending a feast that celebrated death didn’t sound appealing to me in the first place, not when I fought against my own impending demise every day. I wondered if I could use Miss Mabel as an excuse not to attend.
“I don’t think she’ll try that,” I said, my neck emitting a pop when I tilted back to stare at the sloping ceiling. “Think a bit … bigger.”
“That’s not the only thing to worry about,” L
eda said. “Miss Mabel obviously has plans for you. That would scare me more than getting a little angry. Whatever she’s up to is not going to be good.”
“Would she give you a bad grade for no reason?” Camille asked, looking hopeful. A loopy giggle threatened my composure. Miss Mabel worked on a scale ranging from ruthless to inhuman. Grades weren’t her kind of vindictive delight. I wondered if Camille spoke of her biggest fear instead of mine.
“No,” I said as Leda rolled her eyes. “It would be far worse than that.”
“Whatever Miss Mabel ends up doing, you’ll have to be careful,” Leda said. “She’s going to make it hurt.”
Her words were haunting. I pulled my knees to my chest to ward off a sudden chill.
“I know,” I whispered.
We all fell silent, caught up in the ghostly swirls of the unknown future.
I ventured into the classroom the next morning to find Miss Mabel perusing a book. She slammed it shut as I walked in and shot me a smile. Eight or nine stacks of publications sat on my desk and the floor around it, occluding the whole workspace. Seeing my eyes on them, Miss Mabel swept her arm over the piles.
“Your new curriculum,” she said. “Since you did so well on your first mark, I thought we’d jump right into your next one. Don’t worry. I know now that you’re awful at homework, so I’m going to give you a month to read all these. We’ll play off your greater strength of using magic more than books this time.”
The spine of one book read, Contrivance Curses and Their Uses Today. Another book I’d never heard of was called, The Complete Anthology of Dark Curses and Hexes. Confused, I read the titles again to make sure they were correct. Contrivance curses were rooted in a rare kind of magic the Network didn’t allow. Miss Mabel ran her finger down one stack of encyclopedias with a look of innocent detachment.
“I thought you’d like to get the Advanced Curses and Hexes mark.” The tone of her voice suggested that, even if I wasn’t interested, I didn’t have a choice.