Miss Mabel's School for Girls (38 page)

“You get your stubbornness from your father, you know,” she whispered, brushing a lock of hair away from my face. “Just like your fast mind.”

All of her movements were slow and deliberate. She hid her pain. The curse would take her life in a few years. It would strengthen with each day until life was nothing more than a cruel repetition of the day before, her bones worked into bitter ash.

“Bianca, I’m worried about you going back to–”

“It’ll be all right.” I stopped her this time.

“I can’t lose you, too,” she whispered in a small voice. I wondered how my mother survived these horrible years. The pressing weight of the curse, loving a man who couldn’t stay, watching her daughter move closer to death with every birthday. I wanted to ask her if it was worth it. She’d say yes, but I didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t know why.

“You won’t,” I promised. My resolve echoed into the numb soles of my feet.
Confidence, Bianca. She needs to hear your confidence.
“Miss Mabel’s not going to win. Not now.”

Mama took me into her arms and held me close. I took a great deal of solace from the love in her embrace. We stayed there for several long moments.

“Come on, Bianca,” she whispered, pulling away. “Let’s go.”

Helen’s voice changed, switching from the low keen to a sweet melody. An honor chant. The white candle standing over Nana’s grave flickered, then went out.

We will never forget.

I turned to follow Mama, then stopped, grabbed a few skinny twigs, and knelt in front of Nana’s grave. After whispering a spell, the twigs braided themselves together. A small handful of forget-me-nots bloomed from the dead stalks, unfurling their blue wings like a new dove. I draped the crown of flowers around the headstone so it rested across her name.

“So mote it be,” I whispered, leaving her a kiss on the tip of my fingers. Then I took my mother’s hand, and we left Grandmother to rest in the quiet graveyard.

Powerful Chances

I
stood at the window in my childhood room, arms folded across my chest, listening to the last of the villagers as they spoke with Mama. Most of the time their words were a murmur in the background, but occasionally I caught a few snippets.

“So sorry, Marie.”

“Can we do anything?”

“How’s Bianca holding up? They were so close.”

My head hurt, pulsing pain with every beat. Below me sat my rickety old desk, built from a tree my mother and I had chopped down, and a feather pen so old it looked like it had molted. Ink dripped off the end, forming a tiny puddle. I’d sent three more letters to Papa without a word in response. I feared more for him than myself anymore. He’d never gone this long without responding. I didn’t dare bring it up to Mama, who would only worry. 

I turned around, looking over my shoulder when a waft of lemon on the air caught my attention.

Fog filled the room, carrying a citrus scent. Had I been so wrapped up in my thoughts I hadn’t noticed? An expanding mist with a specific smell only came from a powerful transportation spell. I backed up against the wall and sucked in a hopeful breath.

Papa. Who else could it be? Maybe I’d wished him here, brought him here on the power of my aching heart alone.

The cloud thickened, and the lemon scent intensified. The mist filled the room until I could only see a few inches beyond my face. Small drops of water condensed on the ends of my hair and fingertips.

Although I expected someone to arrive, the scratchy voice still startled me.

“Why are you standing against the wall?”

My eyes widened.

The High Priestess’s lumpy frame came into view, appearing as a swatch of fog moved aside. She wore a sparkling yellow dress that made her look sallow and old. Diamond earrings dripped from her ears and matched the petite silver crown nestled in her gray hair.

“Waiting, Your Highness.”

“Well, don’t just stand there. I didn’t stop by for tea. Are you coming or not?”

As if I could refuse the High Priestess.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

She turned, and I stepped forward, following her into the fog. It swallowed us like a giant maw as we walked six or seven steps, leaving my quaint little room and emerging into an opulent office.

A massive mahogany desk, at least nine feet long, stretched across the middle of the room. A wall of windows faced the dying embers of the red and orange sunset. No books, just paintings of parts of the Central Network adorned every available space. Instead of seeming chaotic, the effect was warm.

The mist faded when we stepped into the room. She extended her hand towards me.

“Take my arm.”

Proof that she wasn’t a deception spell. I gripped her forearm in my hand, and she held mine, completing the formal greeting amongst unknown witches. She dropped it almost immediately.

So much for curtsies, Miss Scarlett.

“I brought you here to talk about Miss Mabel.”

The mention of her name made me turn hot, then cold. This couldn’t be good.

“Miss Mabel, Your Highness?”

“Your education started out as a quest to save yourself from a curse set by a corrupt teacher, but it’s about to become much more than that.”

I watched her carefully, more concerned by the tone of her words than by her detailed knowledge about me. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I remained quiet, waiting for her to continue.

“I believe Mabel has plans to overthrow me as High Priestess.”

I blinked.

“Overthrow you?”

“Yes.”

My mind spun. The late meeting with the High Priest, the snarky comments about the High Priestess, Miss Mabel’s questions during the trust potion test. They all swarmed me, spinning around my head like flighty birds.

The only question I could muster of the thousands that reeled in me was the one I feared the answer to the most.

“Why are you telling me?”

“There is reason to believe that she will use you as a means to get to me.”

My eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?” I asked slowly. Her expression never wavered.

“It’s my belief that she plans to have you kill me.”

The blood left my face and hands, pooling in my stomach and making me want to vomit. It couldn’t be. Impossible. There was no chance. Sixteen. I was only sixteen.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “What did you say?”

“Miss Mabel is going to have you kill me.”

“It’s not possible,” I breathed.

“It’s very possible,” she countered. Her small eyes were firm, steely, even, but not afraid. “If you kill me, her hands are clean. The High Priest can offer her name up as my replacement and the Council would agree wholeheartedly. They love Mabel.”

I just stared at her, sorting through this information. The strange world I’d been living in since starting at Miss Mabel’s began to take form, and it resembled the shadows of a hideous beast. The Esbat curriculum, the Advanced Curses and Hexes Mark, practicing curses on a cat. Preparation, all of it, for one violent act of treachery. The conversation I’d overheard with the High Priest began to make sense.

“That’s what they were talking about,” I said, coming out of my thoughts. “I overheard them.”

The High Priestess lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

“Overheard who?”

She listened as I explained what had happened the night of the Esbat. When I finished, her already beady eyes tapered down and she rubbed her lips together.

“Yes, just as I thought.”

She spun and started towards her desk.

“So you knew about this?” I asked, following behind her.

“I’ve known she was up to something for a very long time, but it wasn’t until I saw you at the Esbat that my suspicions were confirmed.”

“The Esbat?” I questioned.

She sat in an ornate chair several feet taller than she was and motioned me into a seat across from it, which I reluctantly lowered myself into. Sitting down cemented the reality of what she told me, and I didn’t need more reality.

“There is no need for a sixteen-year-old girl to be at an Esbat, Bianca. Mabel has never taken notes during an Esbat. She doesn’t need them. She’s got a strong memory. It was a bold move. Bold, or stupid. The two are often difficult to distinguish. My suspicion is that she was testing you and probably getting you more familiar with Chatham.”

It sent my stomach into spirals.

“She’s not just training me to kill you,” I said, thinking about my lessons in the attic and clenching my teeth. A puppet. That’s all I’ve ever been. The fire flared in the hearth with a sudden pop, and the High Priestess sent me a sharp look. I forced myself to calm down by taking a long breath. “She’s training me to work for her, isn’t she?”

“It’s possible,” she said, still watching me with a wary eye.

“She’s going to use my curse as leverage. She’ll remove it only if I kill you.”

“I believe so, yes.”

The vehemence in my tone surprised me, almost bringing me out of the chair.

“I won’t do it.”

“Won’t you? Not even for your own life?”

“No!”

The High Priestess leaned forward. “Or the life of your mother, your friends?”

My heart nosedived. She was right. I’d do anything for my family, and Miss Mabel knew it.

You’re just like Hazel, you know. You’ve got a real soft spot for family.

“There’s nothing I can do about your Inheritance curse, Bianca. I can’t force a witch to do or undo any curse or spell that was cast before I took rule. But we can get through this together, if you’ll do exactly as I ask.”

I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders.

“Yes,” I said. It was good to have an adult take over now, to tell me what to do. “Of course.”

She nodded once.

“She’s going to try to put you in a binding tomorrow morning, during your Advanced Curses and Hexes final.”

My final? It wasn’t supposed to be for another week.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Her irritated tone indicated she didn’t appreciate the question.

“I’m the High Priestess, Bianca. You’d be surprised at how much I know.”

The comment made me nervous. Her eyes seemed to pierce through mine. There were more secrets she knew about. Ones that no one else knew. Ones that possibly involved my father. My heart flip-flopped.

“She’s going to try to bind me into killing you tomorrow?” I asked, hoping to divert the conversation back, though the topic was twice as grim. Grim, but safer.

“Yes. She’ll want to take power before the Western High Priest, Almack, dies, I believe. That could be at any moment if our reports are correct.”

“What does the Western Network have to do with it?” I asked, my confusion deepening.

“Everything,” she said. So simple but so encompassing. A tangled web that I couldn’t even comprehend.

“Miss Mabel is working with Dane,” I whispered. It wasn’t even a question. I could see it in the High Priestess’s eyes. Dane would take over the Western Network. Miss Mabel wanted to take over the Central Network and join forces with the West.

She wanted a war.

“I want you to agree to her deal,” the High Priestess said, pulling me back out of the deepening recesses of my mind.

“What?” I hissed, gaping at her, all concerns for rank and respect aside. That was her big plan?

“Do you need your hearing checked? I told you to agree to whatever deal she makes you.”

“Your Highness, I-I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I can’t kill you!” I cried, jumping to my feet. Her infuriating composure made this worse. “I’m not that strong. I don’t have enough magical power to get into Chatham Castle with that intent. The Guardians would detect it right away. My father would–”

I stopped myself seconds too late.

“If you don’t agree to it, Mabel will kill you. Do you understand that?” she asked, her voice hardening. It was the tone of a woman who had been in charge for many years. “I will not have a student, or several of them, die because of me. If you don’t do it, she may try to find someone else, someone we can’t track or anticipate.”

My legs weakened until I fell back to the chair. I didn’t like it. Not at all. There had to be a better way.

“It’s crazy,” I whispered, staring at the intricate swirls of light red and gold on the carpet beneath me.

“It was a crazy man that came up with it. Fortunately, most of his ideas have a way of working out. He seemed to have an uncanny belief in you.”

She gave me a probing look then, one that kneaded right into my soul. I knew what man she spoke of, and so did she. Somewhere, somehow, the High Priestess had discovered that my father worked for her. A man who was not allowed to have a family by history’s traditions but did anyway.

“You know,” I said.