The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (17 page)

The words burst from Rachel’s lips. “Girls. Over there. Cast a spell on me. I want to go to the infirmary, but they are in the way.”

Fuentes gazed at the other young women, his eyes narrowing.

“Is that so?” He patted her good shoulder. “Wait here.”

Rachel grabbed his arm. “Please…don’t make it worse for me.”

“No problem.” He gave her a big grin and a thumbs-up.

He strode to where the girls waited, laughing, and stood with his hands on his hips. Despite being generally good-natured, he looked rather formidable when he frowned. “Do you girls know the penalty for using magic on your fellow students outside of approved dueling situations? You can get expelled. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

The girls’ smirks disappeared. They looked embarrassed and frightened. Fuentes made a “go away” gesture. They quickly departed. Grinning, Fuentes gestured to Rachel. She came timidly forward until she stood in front of him, her head down. He put his arm around her shoulders. His body blocking her deformities, he led her to the infirmary.

“A patient for you, Nurse Moth!” he called good-naturedly.

The nurse arrived and bustled Rachel into a bed. The flame-colored curtains were only half closed. Rachel glimpsed another girl, a pale redhead with braided pigtails, on the first cot. An otter curled around her sleeping body.

“Again, you!” The nurse threw up her hands. “Between you and your two friends, you have been here more than not. And school has only just begun! For you, though, I have the good news. Your friend, the Princess of the Magical Australia, has awakened. She appears to be fine. They keep her in New York for the night, for observation. Tomorrow, she return for the classes.”

Relief coursed through Rachel, leaving her giddy. As if someone had removed a sodden wool blanket from her shoulders, guilt and fear lifted. In addition to her happiness on her friend’s behalf, Rachel was pleased for the other students. Even in the short time they had been together, others were already looking to the princess for leadership. They seemed lost and disconsolate without her.

The nurse bustled off to get her flute, setting chimes jangling. Overhead, the orrery clicked as its planets rotated. Fuentes sat down on a chair beside Rachel’s bed. “You’re the littlest Griffin girl, aren’t you? Ambrose’s daughter?”

Rachel nodded. “I am Rachel.”

“Welcome to Roanoke,” he grinned.

The door opened, and another man came into the infirmary. He was older, short with broad shoulders and steely gray hair. He came over to where Rachel lay and looked her over.

Fuentes saluted him. “Boss, this is Rachel Griffin. She was…disaccommodated by some fellow freshmen. Rachel, this is the head of security here at Roanoke: Maverick Badger.”

Rachel gaped up at him. She had heard tales of Maverick Badger. When the Terrible Five took over Roanoke twenty five years ago, only Mr. Badger and an Art tutor named Miss Jacinda Moth had stood their ground to protect the students.

Nowadays, Miss Jacinda was known as Dean Moth.

“Did you really capture the Heer of Dunderberg after Simon Magus released him from his prison in Stony Tor?” she asked, wide-eyed.

He chuckled and gave her a grim smile. “Sure did. And I have the burn marks to prove it. So, you are Sandra Griffin’s little sister, are you? We miss Sandra around here. She’s an excellent sorceress and, on top of that, one classy lady. What’s she up to now?”

“She’s working for the Wisecraft at their Scotland Yard location…doing paperwork.” Rachel grinned. “She says it is very boring. I think she’s in the accounting department.”

“Doubt she’ll stay there long,” Badger replied gruffly. “She’s meant for better things. So…what happened to you?” He glanced at Fuentes, as if expecting him to explain.

“A little run in with some expanding cantrips,” he said mildly, gesturing at Rachel’s nose. The rest of her was covered by a blanket.

“Humph. Well, if it keeps up, let me know. I love crushing the spirit of unruly students.” He slammed his fist into his palm with a satisfying
whack
.

Rachel giggled. Then she leaned forward, which was much harder than usual as she listed heavily to one side. “Mr. Badger, you’ve been at Roanoke a long time…have you ever seen a raven. A very big raven?”

Fuentes shook his head, but Mr. Badger ran his hand across his stubbly cheek.

“You mean a raven with blood red eyes?” he asked gruffly.

“Yes!”

“Did someone you know see this raven?” he asked carefully.

“Um…someone did. Y-yes.” Rachel leaned back against the pillows the nurse had propped behind her and pulled her legs against her chest. “W-what is it?”

“Don’t know.” Mr. Badger shook his head, scowling. “But it’s never a good sign, that raven. Ill omen. Something bad’s sure to follow.”

“Oh,” Rachel whispered softly, shivering.

Glancing over, he saw the nurse was returning with her flute and rolled his shoulders. “Must keep going. Got rounds to do. Hope you’re back on your feet soon, Miss Griffin.”

“Thank you, sir.” Rachel shivered as she watched him go.

The nurse’s enchanted healing music restored Rachel to her proper shape. The process was not painful, but the twinkling green sparkles tickled and stung. Exhausted, she fell into a dreamless sleep. She spent the night in the infirmary.

Early the next morning, Peter and Laurel came by to check on her. Peter was quite disturbed. He kept asking her who had attacked her, whether it was an older boy, perhaps one in his grade, and urging her not to walk around alone at night. Laurel, on the other hand, seemed quite amused. She regaled Rachel with tales of similar fates that had befallen other students, including one about a Junior at the upper school who had been turned into a fish. When her siblings finally departed, Rachel ran back to her room, changed, and headed to breakfast.

She arrived to find Siggy tossing pieces of blueberry muffins into the air for Lucky to burn, to the delight of an entranced audience. Each time he threw, Siggy shouted, “Pull!”

Rachel got her food and waited patiently for a chance to speak to her friend. When the crowd dispersed, she let those around her, including Valerie and Joy O’Keefe, know that Nastasia was on the mend. Then, she scooted her chair beside Sigfried’s and spoke to him privately. “So, you know how you wanted to be a knight and avenge wrongs done to us?”

“Yes! Do you have an enemy? Point me at them! Lucky and I will reduce them to ash…or burn their breakfast, whichever you prefer.”

“Last night, some other students cast a spell on me, made me…” she could feel her cheeks getting hot. “They paralyzed me and did some other mean stuff.”

“Just point them out!” he cried. Then he leaned toward her conspiratorially. “Or better yet, point with your elbow, that way they won’t see and won’t notice us coming.”

“Those girls there, at that blue table.”

Siggy’s face froze. His normally mobile expression remained still for so long that Rachel began to fear someone had paralyzed him. Then, he drooped, as if his entire spirit were crushed. “I…can’t attack girls!”

“Oh…W-what do I do?”

“I-I don’t know!” He scowled. “It’s not fair!”

“I can help.” Zoë Forrest put her tray down next to Rachel. Her hair was a bright lilac color today. Her lipstick matched. She flipped the chair around and straddled it backwards. Her quoll peered at Rachel curiously from her shoulder, its black eyes bright.

“How?” Rachel eyed her warily.

Zoë gave her a lackadaisical smile. “Can’t tell. But I can humiliate them. Won’t hurt them. Won’t get anyone expelled, but…‘humiliation galore.’” She spoke the last phrase as if it were a quote, but Rachel did not recognize the reference. “What say you?”

“Um…” Rachel said hesitantly. She glanced at Sigfried, but he was too busy struggling with the conundrum of how to avenge her without attacking a girl. “Okay.”

“Sweet as!” Zoë dug into her French toast. “You’ll see my handiwork tomorrow morning.”

A trip to the mailroom found two letters in her mailbox. The first was a short chatty letter from her mother asking about school and giving her the latest news from the estate. That made Rachel smile. The second was from her father. She opened it eagerly.

Her father’s letter read:

Dear Rachel,

If you encounter anyone using the new geas, report it immediately to Ivan Romanov, Yolanda Debussy, Agravaine Stormhenge, Marta Fisher, or John Darling. Hope school is going well.

Love,

Father

Rachel frowned, slightly disappointed. She had expected some mention of how clever she had been to discover this information, of how thorough her reports were, or of what a good team they made. Even better, she had hoped that his letter might contain clues—reports on strange happenings, news about the new magic, information about the scarab or Nastasia’s visions or the Raven. But of course, she had only written her letter the night before, so he must have had only seconds, after it came through the post glass, to jot off an answer and post it back to her. And she did appreciate the possible opportunity to speak to dreamy John Darling—though after the incident in the kitchens, she was not as eager to do so as she had once been.

Still, she wished her father had let her know that he appreciated her effort. She wanted so much to be of use to him.

Wednesday had two free study periods. One between Language and Math and another in the afternoon between Music and True History. Rachel had already read all her assignments for the first week, but she did not mind reading ahead. She loved learning about the history of early sorcery and the discovery of the Original Language.

She tried to study in her dorm room, but next door Wendy was playing the trombone and a few floors down Oonagh was booming away on her tuba. Rachel retreated to Roanoke Hall and headed upstairs to the abandoned hallway to practice.

She was quite surprised, and yet somehow not surprised at all, when she looked up from wafting the large tome back to the table and found Gaius Valiant leaning casually against the wall. What was he doing here again, hanging out in the hallway with a thirteen-year-old girl?

Didn’t this boy ever go to class?

“Here again, eh?” He gave her a big grin.

“It’s as good a place as any.” She flashed him a wry smile.

“I suppose.” He glanced at the dusty hallway. “Most people practice in their dorms or in the gym.”

“My dorm is a very crowded place.” She sighed. “People play instruments very loudly. It’s hard to hear oneself think, much less read.”

He thought about this and then nodded slowly. “I can picture that.”

“Where are you from?” she asked, suddenly curious about him.

“Cornwall. My father owns…” he hesitated briefly, “…a farm there.”

“Really?” she asked with great interest. There were several tenant farmers on the Gryphon Park estate grounds. Rachel had visited them often during the last several years, and she had read a great deal on farming in her grandfather’s library. A good duke made a point of knowing all about how to manage his estate. “A magical farm or a mundane one?”

“Mundane,” he drawled with a smile. “I only learned there was magic the summer before I came here. Before that, I wanted to be a scientist.”

“I don’t know very much about scientists,” Rachel admitted. She leaned toward him and confided, “I want to be a librarian.”

“Read books and do research all day.” Gaius nodded pleasantly. “I could see that could be enjoyable.”

Rachel rolled her eyes, “Not a mundane librarian! A Librarian of the Wise, like the great Darius Northwest.”

“Sorry. Never heard of him.”

“You’ve never heard of ‘Daring’ Northwest?” Rachel was outraged on her hero’s behalf. “He was the first librarian adventurer! When a patron came into his library looking for a work on the waldgeist, and he did not have any, he went into the wilds of Germany and hunted one down. Not only did he go on to write the definitive work on Teutonic and Slavic forest spirits, he also brought back the only waldgeist ever known to live in captivity. I want to be like him!”

“What an interesting guy.” Gaius looked intrigued. “Are all sorcerous librarians like him?”

“Not all, but many follow in his footsteps. I want to be one who does. I want to go places no one has gone before and see never before seen things.” Rachel pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried in vain to get it to stay in her barrettes. “In my opinion, it is the perfect profession for a bookish person afflicted by wanderlust.” Which she was, in a terrible way.

When reading non-fiction, Rachel often suffered from a nagging fear that the author might have missed some crucial detail. She longed to go see for herself, just in case. Besides, how else was she going to learn amazing things no one else knew, if she did not poke into places no one else went?

Turning her attention back to Gaius, Rachel asked, “So you grew up among the Unwary? How long ago was that? What year are you?”

“I’m a senior at the upper school. So this is the beginning of my…” he paused, mentally counting, “fourth year here.”

“So you are…seventeen.” Her heart fell. That was very old, as old as her brother Peter.

“Sixteen. I was invited to come a year early.”

“Really! Me, too!” she burst out, “A year early, I mean.”

A shiver of intense delight shot through her. Only a really bright child would be invited to Roanoke early. He must be just like her.

Rachel narrowed her eyes and regarded him thoughtfully. He had shared the secret about the geas with her. She found that she wanted to share something important with him, something private. She did have the one secret she had never told anyone. It was a tiny thing that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it meant everything to her.

“Can I tell you a secret?” She leaned forward. “Promise not to tell?” Even after he nodded, she had trouble getting herself to speak, after having kept this to herself for so long. She whispered, “I really wanted to live in Dee. I want to be a scholar and read books all day.” Louder, she continued, “Isn’t that a terrible thing for a Griffin to say? All Griffins have lived in Dare. It’s been that way since before the dawn of time.”