The Midnight Gate (38 page)

They smiled and started to walk down the stairs, then Steve turned back to look at Belladonna.

“How is your wrist?”

Belladonna instinctively grasped at it. “It's fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it's fine.”

“Okay.” He turned and continued down the stairs just as the bell sounded for lunch. “Yes! We missed the rest of Latin. See you!”

Belladonna smiled as he raced outside. The corridors were suddenly full of children as everyone dashed outside or in to lunch or loitered near the radiators. She made her way to the library, where it was quiet and she was sure she could be alone. She needed to think.

The Empress was here, and that was really, really bad. But she had started out as just another girl, plain Margaret Morville. A girl in a priory. She was probably supposed to become a nun. Then she had been chosen to be the Spellbinder. But what had happened to make her turn against everyone, even the Queen of the Abyss? Had just being the Spellbinder changed her so much?

Belladonna chewed on her lower lip and let her hair fall in front of her face. Outside she could see Steve playing football with his friends, jackets off in the near-freezing temperatures and oblivious to everything except that game and that moment.

She wished she could feel that way, but she never had. Steve was the sort of person who could set things aside to worry about later or not at all, but now that she knew the Kere had not only disguised herself as Mrs. Proctor but had also lived for years as Steve's mother, it changed everything.

What did that make Steve? Looking at him running across the field, she couldn't imagine that he was anything more or less than human. So why had the Kere posed as his mother?

She knew she ought to tell Miss Parker. Now that the Empress was here, even ordinary secrets could be dangerous, and this one was far from ordinary.

But she had a secret of her own.

She pulled back the sleeve of her cardigan and looked at her left wrist where the creature had grabbed her. There, beneath the skin, there was a shadow, like a wisp of smoke.

And it was moving, wreathing around her wrist like a slender bracelet.

A piece of the Dark Spaces.

 

A F
EIWEL AND
F
RIENDS
B
OOK

An Imprint of Macmillan

THE MIDNIGHT GATE. Copyright © 2011 by Helen Stringer. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stringer, Helen.

The midnight gate / Helen Stringer. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Twelve-year-old Belladonna Johnson, who lives with the ghosts of her parents, once again teams up with her classmate Steve, whose mother has suddenly disappeared, when they are given a dangerous assignment by a ghostly monk involving the return of the Dark Times.

ISBN: 978-0-312-38764-8

[1.  Supernatural—Fiction.   2.  Ghosts—Fiction.   3.  Orphans—Fiction.   4.  Schools—Fiction.   5.  England—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

PZ7.S9182Mi 2011

[Fic]—dc22

2010036476

Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

First Edition: 2011

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eISBN 978-1-4299-2304-0

First Feiwel and Friends eBook Edition: May 2011