The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle (14 page)

Magister

K
AT MAY BE
asleep, or maybe not. Her room is cold and dark and the clock reads half past five. The others must be at dinner. At the thought, she's aware of a gnawing emptiness in her stomach.

If only she could sneak down to the kitchen . . . but her door is locked.

And then she remembers the crippled boy. He must have come into her room through a hidden doorway, like the one they'd stumbled upon in the keep. She knows there has to be one in her room somewhere. How she'd love to get back at the Lady by finding a secret way out.

She feels her way inch by inch along the walls, searching for a crack, and then she has it, right along the side of the
fireplace. She pushes, and it opens with a low
shush
into a narrow stairway.

She lights one of the candles she'd found in the kitchen and steps down, down, until she's sure she's on the ground floor, and, sure enough, there's another door, the handle on her side. With the candle in her left hand she pulls it open with the right.

It opens on tight hinges—she can feel the counterweight—a heavy door of brick. She holds up the candle and she's in a large, dark closet. She lets her eyes adjust, and all of a sudden another door opposite her opens.

It's all a blur. It may all be a dream.

Kat starts, her right hand still on the door frame, as a very surprised Hugo steps into view, and then the wall of rock behind her closes, the counterweight working its brand of magic, the brick wall closing on her fingers.

The pain in her hand is excruciating, so terrible she can't scream. Hugo moves faster than she would have dreamed for his size, and he heaves his body against the door to free Kat's hand. When she looks at it, some combination of the terrible pain and the sight of her mangled fingers causes her to fall in a faint.

She's back in her dark room, and the clock reads eight thirty. Eight thirty on Saturday evening, it must be. She doesn't remember how she got back there, or very much about the two
and a half hours she's lost. She'd heard Hugo muttering something like “must take her to the magister,” and she had the image of a hut with a glowing fire, and a wizened man holding her damaged hand as Hugo begged him to do something, as it was “my fault, all my fault”—which, of course, Kat knows it wasn't.

She sits up and switches on the electric light. Her hand is perfect. Her fingers are intact, not crushed. She seems to recall white bits of bone and lots and lots of blood. But here it is, unmarked, unscarred, and unbandaged. And something more.

Kat clenches her fist. Her hand feels powerful, better than ever. It's marvelous. And delicate, and super-sensitive. Her clock-mending skills will be superior. She might even be able to fix her father's watch.

It can be nothing but magic.

This magister must be a doctor of extraordinary skill. She doesn't remember the surgery. Except for the strength of her hand, it might never have happened. No, the whole thing is a dream. In fact, there is no magister. Her hand is a normal hand, flesh and bone, no more.

And yet.

By the time someone knocks on Kat's door at eight forty-five, she feels as though she's just awakened from a long sleep and a most bizarre dream. But, dream or not, one certainty fills her.

Magic not only haunts the shadows of Rookskill Castle.

Magic is a real and solid thing, and lives inside her, as real as blood and bone.

Missing

M
ARIE KNOCKED, THEN
unlocked Kat's door and slipped her a package “from Cook. Do not say anything to her Ladyship.” Inside was a Spam sandwich, which Kat sat right down and ate in the hallway, though without enthusiasm. Her mind kept turning toward her father, lost somewhere on the continent.

The other children, as they came out of their rooms, gave her sympathetic looks.

Peter said, “We thought you were taken ill, too, at first.”

Amelie leaned her head against Kat's arm. “I'm sorry I've been so mean to you. The Lady is wicked.”

Kat patted her sister's head.

Rob said, his voice low, “Good thing you aren't ill, since you're the sensible one.” Kat smiled. She knew that took a lot,
coming from Rob. “What did you do, Kat,” asked Amelie, slipping her hand into Kat's, “when you were all alone and hungry, locked in your bedroom? Were you lonely?”

“I'm fine,” said Kat. “I was fine. I've been doing a lot of thinking. Yes, the Lady is mean. But she's more than that.”

“What are you saying?” Peter asked.

“There's something about her that . . .” Kat paused. Everyone's eyes were on her. It was one thing to think it and another to say it.

She finished eating and balled up the wrappings, then stood and dusted off her hands. “I'm going to try to break into the hidden room with the short-wave wireless.”

“What hidden room?” asked Isabelle.

“There
is
a hidden room!” said Colin, wide-eyed. “I knew it!”

“There's a short-wave wireless?” said Rob, leaping to his feet. “You mean, where we heard the noises, there's a wireless? Why didn't you say so?”

“I want to get into that room so we can use it to get away. To get word to our parents, I mean. Listen.”

She told them about seeing Jorry's mother, and how it was wrong that the Lady didn't let her in. Kat said, “We're trapped here. Our parents don't know a thing. Have any of you received letters from home?”

Silence. Peter shook his head, and Isabelle tugged on her curls.

“The only thing I've heard is through a couple of telegrams, which makes me think the Lady has been confiscating our letters,” Kat said. “So we're on our own. Plus,” she added, “we're all at one another's throats. I think we're being divided to make us easier to control.”

“But,” Rob asked, “why?”

“One possibility that Peter and I came up with is that the Lady might be hiding a spy.”

Rob whistled.

“And if she is hiding a spy here that would explain a lot, including the short-wave wireless,” Kat said. “And it would mean we're prisoners. Or hostages. In danger at any rate.” She paused. “But it could be something in addition to a spy. In fact, I'm pretty sure now that there is something else here. Something worse.”

“What's worse than a spy?” Colin whispered.

“Dark magic,” said Amelie, her voice soft. “Something evil.”

A chilled hush settled over them all.

“Or some
one
evil,” Kat said, “like the Lady.” She plunged on. “I've had the worst dreams. Nightmares. Ever since leaving London. There's something about each dream that feels like a message. Sometimes I don't really remember them. But they're telling me something, and . . .” Kat hesitated. “Ame, you may be right.”

“You mean,” Ame said, “you believe now that this could all have to do with magic? Dark magic?”

“Dark magic,” Colin echoed, his face drained of color.

“Yes, Kat. Do you?” said Peter. “Do you believe in magic?”

Ame and Isabelle both stared intently at Kat.

Kat nodded, her lips a thin line.

Ame's eyes widened, and Peter cleared his throat and scratched his chin. Isabelle made a murmuring noise. Colin looked like he might cry. Rob whispered, “If stodgy Kat believes, that's, well, scary.”

They were so quiet for a few minutes that Kat could hear the wind moaning around the outside walls.

“Well,” said Rob at last, in a bright voice, “whether it's a spy or dark magic, I'm game for going after the wireless.” He squared his shoulders, but his eyes read worry.

“Okay,” said Peter. “Hang on.” He stepped into his room and came out with the fireplace poker. He raised it up and grinned. “In case we have to really break in.”

“Right,” said Rob. “And I've got my sword.”

They all made off together toward the stairs and secret room. Kat hoped Marie wouldn't arrive—or worse, the Lady—and find them all out of their rooms.

As it turned out, they had no need of the poker or the sword. For the first time the door was ajar and no one was there. The room was small and windowless and hollowed out under the stair.

It was also empty.

Kat sagged against the wall. “Blast.”

A single lightbulb with a long chain pull hung from the ceiling. A desk hugged one wall, and a chair lay on its side on the floor. Old linens were stacked on a shelf along the back, as if that had been the original purpose of the room.

But there was no wireless. There were no papers, no electric cords, nothing to indicate what had been in the room when they'd heard the noises.

“Now what?” asked Peter.

Kat shook her head. She was fresh out of ideas.

Peter broke the chain pull and wrapped the broken half around the inside handle, tugging the door shut with the end of the pull outside. “In case we need this room.”

“Wow,” said Colin, squinting at the door. “With that fancy wallpaper you can't even see it when it's shut.”

They trudged back upstairs. A heavy weight pressed on Kat's chest. No wireless, no way to contact their parents, no escape. They were trapped.

Trapped in the terrible castle Father had found for them. Father, who might be lost to her forever.

As they passed Jorry's room, Kat paused and pressed her ear up against his door. “Jorry?” she called.

Nothing this time. Not even a whimper. She tried the door, and to her surprise the knob began to turn.

“Here, what are you up to?” It was Marie, once again
appearing as if out of nowhere. “Why are you all loitering about in the hallway? It's time you were in your rooms. Off with you.” She carried the tea cart with the chocolate; Kat didn't even pick up a mug tonight. “And stay away from that room, hear? Doctor's coming tomorrow to take that lad away. He's a terrible contagion.”

Kat hugged her watch.
A doctor is coming.

“This is great news,” Kat whispered to Peter. “Not that Jorry's ill, if he is in fact ill, but that a doctor's coming.”

Peter nodded. “If we can get the doctor to see what's happening and take word back to our folks . . .”

“If he believes us about the spy,” Kat said, her hope fading. “Without the wireless we have no proof.”

“No,” Peter agreed. “No proof of anything.”

As they were making off for bed, Kat pulled Rob aside. He was already yawning. She spoke fast, whispering to him about their father.

The news that Father was captured snapped Rob awake. She watched him take it in, trying not to cry.

“We've got to figure out who was using that wireless and where it went,” Rob said. “For Father's sake.”

Kat put her hand on his shoulder, glancing at Amelie, who was now settled permanently in Isabelle's room, the two of them tottering off to sleep. “Let's not tell Ame about Father yet.”

He nodded. “Kat, what do you think the Jerries will do to him?”

“Maybe they'll keep him a prisoner. For, I don't know, a prisoner exchange or something.”

“But Father's a spy. Don't they execute spies?”

They'd never before admitted to each other what their father did. When Rob said it, the truth settled on her like a terrible weight. Their father was a spy for their country. And execution was how the enemy dealt with spies. She swallowed the lump in her throat before saying, “Let's hope they don't.”

Rob yawned again. “I'm always so tired at night. Must be all this schoolwork.”

Kat turned away, then paused. “Robbie, don't drink the chocolate. I'm pretty sure it's been tampered with.”

His eyes grew wide as he realized what she meant. “So that's it. Now I really don't like this place.”

“There's something else,” Kat said. “Someone who wears a black greatcoat is wandering the grounds. I've seen him heading toward the cliffs. I think whoever it is might be connected with our mysteries, but I don't know how.”

Rob chewed his lip and nodded, but said only, “Night, Kat.” He turned away, then turned back and gave his sister a quick hug, the first in many months.

“Night, Rob.”

Kat closed the door to her room and leaned back against it.
When the doctor came for Jorry, she'd beg him to take them all away, get them out of this nightmare. She'd see her mum again and her great-aunt Margaret. She'd return her great-aunt's chatelaine and pretend that she'd never believed magic to be real.

As she was closing her dresser drawer, she paused. The chatelaine.

Of course.

Of course! If dark magic was real—and Kat felt sure now that it was, although she still wished it wasn't—then the magic her great-aunt had given her would be real, too. That was what Great-Aunt Margaret was on about. She wasn't loony. She was trying to prepare Kat to use good magic, magic that Storm had said collected in certain old things like dust.

Kat's heart rose, and she couldn't wait to hug her great-aunt. Kat would figure out how to use the chatelaine, how to turn its good magic against the dark, and they would all be saved.

She couldn't help smiling.

Kat reached inside the drawer and felt around. She brushed her hand back and forth. All right, then. Where was that blasted thing?

She put both hands in the dresser, rumpling the neatly folded sweaters and socks, ruffling them with more and more anxiety, pushing and pulling, searching.

Where was Great-Aunt Margaret's chatelaine?

Panic filled her throat as a knotty lump.

She pulled the drawer fully open and dumped the contents on the floor, tossing things left and right until she'd sorted through it all once, and again. She peered under the bed. She searched the bathroom. She lifted the corners of the curtains and lay flat on the floor to feel underneath the dresser.

There was no trace of her great-aunt's chatelaine.

Kat's heart pounded, and she found it hard to breathe as she sat on the floor among the scatter of clothes. Why hadn't she looked for it before this? When was the last time she'd seen it? Was it a week? She seemed to remember seeing it a week ago on Saturday. . . .

Kat hugged herself and rocked back and forth.

If only she'd believed in it sooner. She'd been too logical. Too stodgy. Her stomach ached with realization.

If her great-aunt was right, the chatelaine in Kat's keeping was the one thing that might protect them from the dark magic of Rookskill Castle.

And Kat had lost it.