Blythewood (32 page)

“You were spying on me!” I accused him.
“I wanted to know where your sudden interest in library
economy came from. Now I see that you’re really interested in a
career in book thievery.”
“I am not,” I hissed. “I just wanted to have a look at something.”
“Something you couldn’t look at with everyone else here?”
“As if you don’t hoard your books to yourself, too, Nathan.
I’ve seen you hunched over them like a hawk mantling its prey.”
Nathan laughed at the image. For a moment he looked like
the old Nathan, but then his eyes turned chilly again. “I suppose you know all about birds of prey now,” he said.
“So you
did
see me with the Darkling that night,” I said,
glad it was too dark where I stood in the hall for him to see me
blush. “Why didn’t you tell the others?”
“Because I saw other things in the woods that night that I’m
not ready to tell anyone about. I’m willing to hide your secret if
you’re willing to hide mine.”
I knew it was a deal I shouldn’t make, but my fingers were
itching to get a look at that catalogue. Once I’d found
A Darkness of Angels
I could prove the Darklings weren’t evil and find
a way to rescue Louisa from Faerie. Then I could tell Nathan
everything and find out what he was hiding. “Fine,” I said. “I
suppose you ambushed me here so I could let you into the library, too.”
“Actually, I don’t need you for that,” he said, taking a ring
of keys out of his pocket. “I stole these from my mother months
ago. I just thought it would be fun to give you a scare.”
If Nathan had looked like he was having fun I would have
been angrier, but it was clear he was in the throes of winter fever, pursuing his mysterious obsession. “Then let’s go in, shall
we? I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me.”
He unlocked the door and waved me in. “Ladies first,” he
said with mock courtesy.
The moonlight was bright enough to light the library, but
I would need a lantern to go down to the Special Collections.
Descending those spiral stairs with the moonlight pouring
down them felt like climbing into the well I’d envisioned when
the crows had attacked me. I was relieved when Nathan offered
to go down with me.
“So what was worth fooling Miss Corey for?” he asked
when we reached the bottom.
“It’s a catalogue,” I said, taking the book out of its hiding
place, “of other libraries belonging to the Order. I thought I
might find a book I’m looking for.” I flipped through the pages,
searching the alphabetical list . . . and found it.
A Darkness of
Angels
by Dame Alcyone.
Alcyone.
That was the name of one
of Merope’s sisters. There was a copy in the Hawthorn School
library in Scotland.
“Hm,” he said, looking over my shoulder. “Are you going to
Scotland to find it?”
“Hardly,” I said, “but I can write to the librarian at Hawthorn. The address is on the first page.” I flipped to the beginning of the catalogue and copied down the address. I was closing the book when I heard a noise from the candelabellum.
I turned to Nathan to see if he had heard it, too. I wasn’t
sure what would be worse—if I was imagining noises in the
candelabellum chamber or if something was making the bells
move on their own. The minute I saw Nathan’s frightened face,
I knew which was worse. I thought of the figures we’d seen in
there—shadow crows and shadow wolves, but worst of all, the
prince who’d succumbed to the shadows and become a shadow
master. What if
he
were in the candelabellum chamber?
The door knob turned.
Nathan extinguished the lantern, plunging the archive
into darkness save for the circle of moonlight coming down
from the stairwell. He pushed me behind a filing cabinet and
squeezed in beside me while the door creaked open, making so
much noise it covered the sound of our breathing and my heart
beating—out of fear, I told myself, not from the warmth of Nathan’s body pressed against mine.
A lumpen figure loomed in the doorway, cast in shadow
by a ruddy wedge of light that angled toward us. I thought of
the red eyes that had fixed onto mine in the teacup vision and
imagined the light came from them. The figure lumbered into
the corridor and paused, holding a lantern up to one of the
shelves. I was afraid he would find us when the light reached us,
but evidently the intruder found what he was looking for. He
took something off the shelf and turned to go, pausing in the
circle of moonlight. He looked up . . . only it wasn’t a he. Shining greasily in the moonlight was the face of Euphorbia Frost.
She stared at the open doorway to the stairwell for several
long seconds. Then she looked around the corridor, peering
into the shadows. She was staring straight at us, her eyes shimmering red in the light from her lantern, which, I saw now, was
shaded by a red silk scarf. I was sure that she’d seen us, but then
I remembered that she was nearsighted. She groped for her
lorgnette, but she was holding too many things in her hand to
raise it to her eyes.
“Careless!” she muttered, clucking her tongue. Then she
lifted the thing she’d taken from the shelf. Something glimmered glassily in the moonlight and the room was suddenly full
of the smell of spirits. Miss Frost lifted the bottle to her mouth
and took a long swallow of the clear liquid. Then she smacked
her lips, belched, and went back into the candelabellum chamber.
When the door had closed behind her, and the sound of her
retreating footsteps had faded, Nathan exploded in a paroxysm
of giggles. I elbowed him in the ribs to hush him, but laughter
was bubbling up in my own mouth.
“She hides  .  .  . her liquor  .  .  . in the dungeons!” Nathan
managed through bursts of hilarity. “All the most valuable
secrets in the world—the location of the fountain of youth
for all we know!—and she uses it for her liquor stash.”
“Well,” I said, “I suppose for her it
is
the fountain of youth.
She’s certainly well . . .
pickled.
”
Nathan collapsed against me giggling. It was so good to
hear him laugh like his old self that I added, “Perhaps she stores
the stuff here to age it like fine wine.”
“I sincerely doubt she leaves it long enough to age it,” Nathan replied, wiping his eyes. “Imagine what we could do with
this knowledge. We could switch her liquor for one of Jager’s
potions. Turn her hair lavender . . .”
“Or give her a shape-shifting potion that makes her grow
horns,” I spluttered.
But Nathan had stopped listening. He had spotted a book
on a shelf that interested him. As soon as he plucked it off the
shelf the hunch came back to his shoulders and all the merriment drained out of his face.
“Yes, that would be droll,” he replied absently. “Well, if
you’ve got what you want, then, I’m going upstairs to do some
reading. You can let yourself out.” He drifted up the stairs, leaving me alone in the dark.
I went to the shelf from which Miss Frost had removed
her bottle and saw that there was an empty space between the
books. I’d just dusted this shelf so I knew that it held forbidden
books on contacting evil spirits. What would Miss Frost want
with those?
Unless she was the spy Raven had warned me about.

I WROTE A letter to the head librarian of the Hawthorn
School in Scotland, whose name, I learned from Miss Corey’s
files, was Herbert Farnsworth. I considered pretending to be
one of my teachers, but in the end I told him that my mother
had been looking for the book
A Darkness of Angels
before she
died. Generally all the girls posted their letters by leaving them
in a basket in the front hall, where they were collected by Gillie and then taken to the town post office. I’d seen Miss Frost
idly rifling through these letters, though, tsking over bad penmanship and improper modes of address. If she were the spy,
I couldn’t take the chance of her seeing that I was writing to
the librarian at Hawthorn, so I decided to walk into town and
post it myself, even though it was against the rules to leave the
grounds without permission. I waited for a morning when Daisy had vanished again (to wherever it was she went) and Helen
was busy writing a letter to her mother, and then snuck out and
walked the mile into town myself.

It felt good to get out of the castle and into the crisp, clean
air away from all the whispers and secrets lurking around the
halls of Blythewood. It was cold, but I was wearing my Christmas present from my grandmother, an oxblood-red wool coat

with black passementerie embroidery on the sleeves and hem
and plush black fur at the collar and the cuffs. It had come with
a matching fur hat and muff that Agnes had said in a separate
note were just like the ones the youngest tsarina wore. I
did
feel
like a Russian princess in the ensemble.

But I still didn’t feel like I fit in at Blythewood. If the girls
at school knew what I was really like they would turn away in
horror—even Sarah, who’d been so kind to me these last few
months, would never understand my feelings about one of the
creatures she blamed for abducting her best friend. I would be
expelled, as my mother had been. And then where would I go?
My grandmother wouldn’t take me in after a second humiliation to the family name. Even Caroline Janeway might not be
able to employ me if I’d embarrassed myself at Blythewood
when she depended so much on the school for her trade.

No wonder my mother had drifted from place to place.
When you didn’t fit in anywhere, you had to keep moving.
By the time I reached the post office I’d worked myself into
a tizzy. The salutary effects of the fresh air wore off as I stood
on line in the snug, low-ceilinged building. I was sweating under my Russian princess coat, my shoulders and back itching
against the wool. When the postal clerk looked up from my
letter and said, “All the way to Scotland, eh? Have you family
there?” I almost burst into tears.
“No,” I managed hoarsely, “no family.”
Outside on the street the cold air snaked under my loosened
collar and spread its icy touch down my damp shoulder blades.
It felt as if someone had laid his hands on my back. And then I
heard a bell tolling inside my head. I whirled around. A shadow
moved on the front porch of the inn next door to the post office.
I squinted at it, the bright winter sun glancing off the glass windows of the inn momentarily blinding me. I shaded my eyes and
saw him—the man in the Inverness cape. He was standing beside a column, facing me, his face shadowed by his Homburg hat.
Then he tipped his hat and smiled at me. A wisp of smoke
curled out of his mouth.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. But suddenly I was
tired of running. My mother had spent her whole life running,
and look where it had gotten her.
I straightened my back and felt the ice along my shoulder
blades turn to steel. I strode up the flagstone path, straight toward the man in the Inverness cape. Two women whisked their
skirts out of my way and whispered behind their fur muffs. Let
the great Shadow Master take me on here in front of the good
people of Rhinebeck. Let him loose his crows at me and turn
into a writhing smoke monster. Let him . . .
He bowed low in front of me, sweeping his hat out in an arc.
I stopped abruptly, my boot heels screeching on the bluestone
flags. I held my breath as he lifted his head, steeling myself for
a monster.
Instead, a handsome gentleman of perhaps forty-odd years
with refined features smiled at me. He had a long narrow face,
an aquiline nose, and dark hair brushed back from a high forehead with two silver streaks at his temples that looked like
wings. His eyes were dark—almost as black as Raven’s, but flatter and colder. One eyebrow was raised archly in query.
“I do not believe I’ve had the pleasure of your acquaintance,
Miss. Was there some way I could be of assistance to you?”

Did I have the wrong man? Had I imagined that wisp of smoke?
“I . . . er . . . I thought you were someone else,” I stammered.
“Ah, I am relieved. You approached me as if you had a vendetta against me. I would not like to be the man who crossed
you so. Allow me to introduce myself.”

He held out his hand. As if lifted by a string, my own hand
floated up and found itself in his. It was like dropping my hand
into ice water. The iciness spread from my hand, up my arm,
and into my chest—a cold so intense it
burned
. I looked down,
expecting either a block of ice or a charred lump where my
hand had been. My gloved hand lay lightly in his gloved hand,
but I could no more have removed it than if it had been trapped
inside a metal vise. I lifted my eyes back to his.

“Judicus van Drood,” he said.
“Avaline Hall,” I replied, feeling as if someone else was
speaking. The numbness had reached my lips. I had a horrified
feeling that anything might come out of them—shocking improprieties, bawdy songs, gibberish.
“Ah, I believe I knew you mother,” he said. “You have her
eyes. My condolences for her untimely demise.”
“Thank you,” I said through frozen lips, “for your sympathy.” Inside I was screaming. I would rather have shouted
obscenities than trade polite niceties with the man who had
hounded my mother to her death.
“Such a shame,” he continued, clucking his tongue as
though my mother’s death was a broken vase. “For such a lovely
woman to die so young. I’m afraid that her constitution was
weakened by too much intellectual stimulation. Education can
have that unfortunate effect on the frailer sex. Even after she
left Blythewood she wasted her time reading foolish books,
didn’t she? In fact, those last few months she was engaged in a
search for a particular book, was she not?”
I tried to clamp my lips shut, but the words came bubbling
up. “Y-yes . . . she sent me to the library for s-s-some books . . .”
Hot tears sprung to my eyes, but they froze before they
could fall. The burning ice had risen to my eyes. Soon it would
be inside my brain and then I would be his entirely.
“I just hope you’re not following in your mother’s footsteps,
Ava. I was very concerned to hear that you’ve been looking
through the Blythewood special collections.”
I wanted to ask how he knew that, but the words would not
come out of my mouth. He smiled, parting his lips, and a puff
of smoke slipped out of his mouth. Before my horrified eyes, I
watched it form into the shape of a crow that flapped its wings
and settled on his shoulders. I wanted to turn my head and see
if anyone else could see it, but I couldn’t move.
“Never mind who told me that you’ve been looking through
the special collections. I know you haven’t found it there. But I
am
intrigued about this little trip to the post office. Have you
located a copy of the book? If so, I’d very much like to know
where.”
Mr. Farnsworth’s name and address were on the tip of my
tongue. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep them from spilling out. The taste of blood momentarily melted the ice in my
mouth. Iron and blood, Mr. Jager had once told us, were our
best defenses against other magic. But it wasn’t enough. The
name was still coming . . .
The church bells began to ring the noon hour. Van Drood
swiveled his neck toward the sound. The minute his eyes were
off mine I felt a loosening of the ice. I wrenched my hand out of
his, but I still couldn’t move my legs. He snapped his head back
toward me.
The ninth bell rang. If I didn’t get away before the toll ended
I would give him Mr. Farnsworth’s name and something terrible would happen to him. The bells tolled ten and I heard it
echo within me, the iron of the bell reverberating in the iron of
my blood. The bells tolled eleven. The sound was inside me, a
part of me. I was a chime child. The bells belonged to me.
The bells tolled twelve.
Judicus van Drood lifted his hand and reached for me.
The bells tolled thirteen.
His eyes widened, black pupils swelling over the whites.
The bells tolled fourteen.
His hand was frozen midair. The shadow crow on his
shoulder shattered into shards and the ice that held me shattered with it.
The bells tolled fifteen. How many more chimes did I have?
I should bolt.
I looked into van Drood’s eyes. The black pupils had totally
overrun the white. That darkness seethed like smoke. A vein
throbbed at his temple so angrily it looked as though it was going to explode.
I smiled. “My mother always said that men who oppose
women’s education are afraid of women becoming too strong
because they themselves are too weak. You have a weakness,
Mr. van Drood. I will find it and destroy you for what you did to
my mother. Good day.”
I turned and walked back down the bluestone path. Pins
and needles stabbed my legs as my limbs slowly came back to
life. I had to concentrate on not falling and strive very hard not
to break into a run. The bells were still tolling. Men and women
stood on the street staring up at the church’s bell tower, some
walking toward the church.
I didn’t know why the bells were still ringing, but I knew
I had to get as far away from van Drood as I could before they
stopped. The streets were crowded now, full of townspeople
wondering why their church bells were tolling as if for a funeral
or a fire. I crossed the street to get farther way from van Drood
and picked up my pace as my legs warmed up. At the corner of
Livingston Street I bumped into a short plump woman.
“Pardon me,” I said, trying to get around her, but she
grabbed hold of my hand. I let out a yelp and pulled away, frightened of being touched so soon after van Drood’s hands had
been on me.
“It
is
you!” The little woman cried. “I knew it! I told Hattie
that only a chime child could do this.”
I looked down into Emmaline Sharp’s kind plump face.
“Are you in danger?” she asked.
I nodded and began to shake.
“You poor child, your hands are like ice. Come along to
Violet House with me.”
“But the bells,” I said, looking back down Main Street. Van
Drood was no longer standing in front of the inn. “If I started
them mustn’t I stop them?”
“They’ll stop when you feel safe again. Come. We’ll sit you
by the fire and get some hot tea into you.” She steered me down
Livingston Street, past houses where people stood on their
porches and in their yards, talking about why the bells were
ringing. Harriet Sharp stood in front of Violet House with
her brother Thaddeus. She was stroking his arm, murmuring
something to him. His sparse hair was standing up in disordered clumps and he was rocking on his heels, clearly agitated.
When he saw me with Emmaline he began to hop in place.
“Be gone
,
say the Bells of Rhinebeck,”
he yelled out at the top
of his voice. “
Shadows fly back to Hell’s Gate!”
Hell’s Gate? Where was that? Could Uncle Taddie know
what had happened from the sound of the bells?
“Yes, yes, Taddie,” Aunt Harriet said soothingly. “The
shadows are all gone. And here’s Ava come to have tea. Why
don’t you go to the greenhouse and pick her a posy?”
Taddie grinned at me. “A posy for the chime child who banished the shadows. Yes, yes!” He turned and zigzagged across
the lawn to the greenhouse. Aunt Harriet turned to her sister.
“You were right, Emmy, it
was
Ava! She must have been in
terrible danger. But,” she turned to me, “you’re safe now. Come
on in. Emmy said there’d be company for tea, so Doris baked a
Victoria sponge cake.”
I was ushered up the porch steps and through the front door
by both aunts. The house was warm and smelled of violets, tea,
and cake. I breathed in the comforting warm aroma and willed
my heart to stop racing.
You’re safe, you’re safe
, I told myself, but
still the church bells rang. Would I ever feel really safe again?
Hattie and Emmy bustled me into the conservatory, where
a fire crackled on the hearth. They sat me down in an overstuffed chintz chair and draped a cashmere shawl around my
shoulders as I falteringly told them about my encounter with
the Shadow Master, whose name, I now knew, was Judicus van
Drood. I thought I saw the aunts exchange a meaningful look
when I mentioned his name, but then Hattie quickly poured another cup of tea and Emmy threw another log on the fire. Still
the bells rang.
Doris brought in a silver tray laden with hot buttery scones
and golden sponge cake. Taddie came in from the greenhouse
with a bouquet of violets and laid them on the tea tray. The entire household bustled around me, but still the bells rang.
A floorboard creaked behind me and the aunts and Taddie
looked up. “Oh,” Emmy said, “I’d almost forgotten. You haven’t
met our new boarder . . .”
The last thing I wanted was to meet a stranger. I looked up
at the tall dark man entering the room, wondering how on earth
I was going to manage polite conversation . . . and my mouth fell
open.
“Avaline Hall, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Corbin,”
Harriet said.
The dark-haired young man bowed his head in greeting. His
hair was slicked back and he wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses,
a bulky tweed jacket, and a barely-suppressed grin. Despite his
urbane appearance I had no trouble recognizing Raven.
There was an awkward silence as I stared up at him openmouthed. Then Taddie broke the silence by turning to his sisters.
“Listen,” he cried, “the bells have stopped!”