Eternal (20 page)

His words made sense, though I was now gripped with a dread that Helen might already have been smuggled out of the school by Miss Dalrymple and the coven. I began to run.

“Wait!” Cal said, running after me. “We’l come with you.”

“No!” I stopped for a moment. “If you want to help, go and—” I could hardly bear to say it. “Go and search the river for Evie. If she real y is—if her body is there . . .”

“She’s not dead, Sarah, I promise,” Josh said, and for a brief moment a faint smile softened his expression.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I feel her, in here,” he said, and he lightly touched his forehead. “And I see her, like a bright flame in the dark.” I hoped with al my being that he was right and that his hidden link with Agnes would guide him now. “But we’l search for her, al the same,” he added. “We’l go to the river.”

“Thank you, thank you so much,” I gabbled. “I’l see you back at school. I’ve got to get back to Helen now. I can’t lose any more time.”

For a moment Cal and I stood face-to-face. “I hate you going alone,” he said, frowning. “It’s not safe.”

“I’m not alone,” I answered. “I’ve got you.” I reached up and kissed him, then broke away. “You’l try to find Evie with Josh? You promise?”

“I promise.” He kissed me again. “And I never break my promises.” Then he and Josh turned away in the direction of the moors, and I set off back to the Abbey, running as fast as if the Priestess and her hel hounds were already tracking me down.

The door of the infirmary creaked as it opened. I slipped into the white, clinical room, feeling numb. Nothing seemed quite real anymore. Racing back from the vil age, sneaking back into the sleeping school, wondering whether I would be caught on the stairs: none of that was real. Only Agnes’s message was real. I had to seek out my sisters and save them.

A clock was ticking in the corner of the room. There were four white beds, and another door that led to the place where the nurse slept. Helen’s bed was the only one occupied.

“Oh God, thank you . . . thank you. . . .” I was so grateful to find Helen stil there that the shock of her appearance didn’t immediately sink in. But she was just as I had seen her in Agnes’s picture. Helen was lying rigidly on her back with her eyes open, seeing nothing. Her breath was coming in low, ugly rasps with long pauses in between each painful gasp. I felt her forehead and wrist. She was cold and clammy and her pulse was barely registering. A little voice in my head that seemed to come from another world told me I should cal out for the nurse and telephone for an ambulance. But the adult world had let us down. Mrs.

Hartle and the other corrupt teachers at this fine school had used Helen and Laura and the rest of us for their own ends. The doctors would be helpless against the force that held Helen in its relentless grip. It had nothing to do with conventional medicine; this was the Priestess’s poison at work in her veins. Sophie had been right after al . Despite

—or even because of—the attentions of the staff, Helen was near to death.

As I hovered over Helen’s white face, strangely beautiful even in this extremity, Miss Hetherington’s words came back to me. Did Helen actual y want to leave this world?

Would I be wrong to cal her back, even if I could?

Disconnected images spun through my mind: Helen crying over her mother’s submission to the Unconquered lords, Helen standing on the roof of the school and stepping into the void, Helen carrying us with her through air and space like a shooting star. Helen—loveless, tragic, misunderstood. She had never real y been happy. Perhaps it would be easier than I had thought to let her go, and let her be in peace. Was that what she wanted? I hesitated, desperate to do the right thing.

My fingers closed around the glass phial that was stil in my pocket. I had to try. I couldn’t give up, and neither could Helen. She hadn’t had her chance at life yet, and everyone deserved that.

I unsealed the little bottle and dropped some of the remaining liquid onto her lips, then dabbed her forehead with the rest. Helen stirred and moaned. Her arm shifted position on the white cover, and I saw the livid scar on her skin and noticed that her hand was tightly clenched. Taking her icy hand in mine, I kissed it, and her muscles seemed to relax and her hand opened up. She had been clutching a smal round object. I had never seen it before, but I knew at once what it must be. It was the brooch that Mrs. Hartle had left with Helen as a baby, and it was the exact size and shape of the tattoolike marking on Helen’s skin.

I remembered the words of the Book: “From where do such signs come? Many Scholars declare they are a Sign of great Destiny, with Death in their wake. . . .”

A sign of great destiny. This seemingly insignificant bit of jewelry, or whatever it was, had started al this trouble for Helen, I thought. I picked it out of Helen’s open palm and examined it. Was the pattern in the center of the circle supposed to be crossed swords or a pair of stylized wings? Was it a sign of danger? And how—and why—had it transferred a perfect image of itself onto Helen’s skin?

For a second I seemed to see the flames dancing on Agnes’s hand when she had shown us the vision of Helen.

An odd phrase came to me: Fight fire with fire. Without stopping to analyze it, I took the brooch and placed it exactly over the mark on Helen’s arm, then pushed it into her flesh like a seal. At once, Helen sat up, her eyes wide-open in pain.

“Aaah . . . that hurt . . . ah!” She clutched her arm. The mark stood out red and angry. But the next moment she threw her arms around my neck and sobbed, “Thank you . . . oh, Sarah, thank you so much. I wanted so much to come back after I fel , but I couldn’t. She was holding me

—”

“Who was it?” I asked. “Your mother? Or was it Velvet?”

Helen stared at me with haunted eyes. “No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like that.”

“So what happened? Who was it?”

“I was in a deep, secret place,” Helen said faintly. “And someone was keeping me prisoner.” She hid her face in her hands and whispered, “It was Miss Scratton.”

“Miss Scratton?”

“Yes. She was holding me back. She’s working against us.”

Nothing made sense anymore.

The rest of the night passed like a slow-motion dream.

First we had to face the nurse, who must have been woken up by the sound of us talking. She came into the sickroom to find me sitting on Helen’s bed, and she furiously brushed away my explanations about being worried for Helen. “I’ve never heard of anything so selfish, bursting in here in the middle of the night like this! And Helen needing to rest so badly, you could have given her a real setback.”

Yet she was clearly surprised and pleased with Helen’s pulse and breathing, and calmed down a little when Helen pleaded with her not to be angry.

“You don’t know how Sarah has helped me,” she begged. “Seeing her has made me feel so much better.

Please don’t tel anyone. Don’t get her into trouble.”

Eventual y the nurse stopped scolding and let me go to my dorm, but I couldn’t sleep. Nothing made sense. Helen had been cured by a sign of evil, and Miss Scratton was the one who had trapped her spirit and body and dragged her to the brink of existence. So our supposed Guardian had fled and become our enemy. Now everything had another interpretation. Miss Scratton must have set up that road accident herself somehow, and then escaped to join the Dark Sisters. That’s why she was never in the hospital.

It was al a fake, and everything Miss Scratton had told us was a lie. But she helped us, I told myself. I believed in her. . . .

I didn’t know what to believe. I couldn’t take it in. I kept saying the same words over and over again. “But the mark is evil, and Miss Scratton is on our side,” until I got al mixed up. “The mark is on our side . . . Miss Scratton is evil . . . the mark is Miss Scratton. . . .” I must have fal en asleep, because I plunged into a vivid dream.

I was with Cal. We were in the woods, and the earth was alive with light and warmth. The trees were newly crowned with fresh green leaves, and a swath of bluebel s shone purple against the tree trunks. Between the trees a smooth lawn of grass was sprinkled with white flowers. Cal bent to pick some of them and twined their fragile stalks in my hair. Then we stood face-to-face, as though waiting to dance or speak, but we were silent, too ful of strange new feelings to talk. He looked at me questioningly and then ran his fingers through my hair and down my neck. Our mouths searched for each other, and we trembled as we kissed, as though we couldn’t believe that this happiness was real y for us. I seemed to hear the trees breathing, and sense the grass growing, and the sweet, heady scent of the bluebel s was as potent as wine.

The next moment everything shifted, and the grass became a boggy field of mud. From behind the slender trees an army of grotesque clay-colored creatures emerged. Their misshapen bodies and swol en heads fil ed me with disgust as they began to paw at me, pul ing me away from Cal. I was slipping out of his grasp, leaving him behind. “No!” Cal shouted. “Come back!” Then his face changed, and he was reaching out to me and shouting, “Maria, Maria, come back! Don’t touch her! No!”

I echoed his cries and cal ed wildly, “No, no, no . . .” I woke up sweating, not realizing that I had shouted out loud.

“Sarah, what’s wrong?” Ruby was sitting up in bed and staring at me in concern, blinking shortsightedly. “Are you okay?”

“Oh . . . yeah . . . sorry. Nightmare.” I fel back on my pil ows and wiped my face. I could stil see those pawing, bony hands. I could stil see the distress in Cal’s eyes as I was dragged away from him. I could stil hear the frantic voice cal ing Maria’s name.

“What the hel was al that about?” Velvet asked, glaring at me from her rumpled bed.

“Nothing—a bad dream. Sorry.”

“Sounded like you were having total hysterics. Mind you, I don’t blame you.” Velvet yawned and looked at her watch.

“Oh crap, the bel wil go in a minute. Might as wel get up and face another perfect day in the madhouse.” She got out of bed and started pul ing clothes out of her drawers and throwing them down in a heap. “This place is enough to drive anyone crazy. I can’t stand the thought of wearing this disgusting uniform for one more minute. If my parents don’t get me out of here soon, I’l burn the place down. I’m not joking.”

“I thought you were enjoying being the ‘Wyld Child,’” I said, trying to cover up the confusion I stil felt about my nightmare.

“Oh please, don’t insult me,” Velvet drawled. “Freaking out a few dimwits like Sophie and ragging ancient teachers isn’t exactly hard.”

“Velvet, don’t go looking for trouble,” I said, sitting up and pleading with her. “You don’t know what you might stir up.”

“Like what? Getting a detention? Getting the school picnic canceled or whatever it was that Miss Scratton promised al the good little girls for a treat?”

“No, it’s just—Wyldcliffe is kind of different. Things go on that shouldn’t.”

“How interesting,” she replied coldly. “Do tel me more.”

She stared at me with her deep, sultry eyes, and I wondered again just how much she real y knew.

“What did you say to Helen before she fel through that window?” I asked.

“Me? I didn’t say anything to her. I wasn’t near the place.

Why should I have been?”

Because Sophie isn’t a liar. Because you were there when your sister died, and when that fire started at your last school, and when your mom’s assistant got injured.

Because I don’t trust you.

It was hopeless. I couldn’t say any of those things. “I just don’t think you should do stuff that affects other people like Sophie,” I said lamely. “She’l end up getting hurt. She was real y upset after your little scene at the ruins the other night.”

“Yes, she was,” added Ruby. “It’s not fair. You’re rich and famous, Velvet, so it doesn’t real y matter what you do, or what happens to you, but some of us want to do wel at school and get into col ege and stuff like that. We need to get good reports.”

“So it doesn’t real y matter what happens to me?”

Velvet’s expression hardened. “Is that what you al think?

That I haven’t any feelings, just because my picture gets into the papers?”

“Ruby didn’t mean that—,” I began.

“Forget it. You’re right, Ruby. I shouldn’t ask anyone to be involved with me. I shouldn’t try to have any friends or any fun.” Velvet’s voice became harsh, and she began to tear her nightclothes off and fling her uniform on anyhow.

“I’m a bad influence,” she said savagely. “I should be the one who gets hurt. Everyone hates me, even my mom.”

She pushed her feet into her shoes, then stood up and leaned over my bed. Her face was so close to mine that I could see the soft texture of her creamy skin and smel the trace of the heavy, expensive perfume she always used. “I liked you to start with, Sarah. I would have been a better friend to you than that snotty redheaded Evie Johnson and crazy Helen Black. But it’s too late now. So if we’re not going to be friends, we’l have to be enemies.”

“Don’t be so—”

“Enemies,” she snarled, and swept out.

I started to get dressed, churning up with every emotion.

Deep down I was sorry for Velvet, but she scared me too. I didn’t know what to think of her. Was she a melodramatic poseur or something more dangerous? But as I walked down the marble staircase I told myself there was only one person I needed to think about, and that was Evie. Helen had come back from the threshold of death, but Evie was stil lost, and every hour, every minute was precious in the race to find her.

When I went into breakfast, I was surprised to see that Helen was there too, looking extremely pale and tired.

“Why aren’t you resting?” I asked.

“I’ve persuaded the nurse that I am wel enough to come back to school,” she replied. “My fever has gone, and she couldn’t find anything wrong, so she had to let me.”

I was so glad to have her back, but she stil seemed slightly feverish to me. There was a hectic look in her eyes, and she wasn’t touching the food in front of her.

“Can I see it?” she asked in a low voice.