Rachel sank into Gaius’s arms, her eyes half-closing, her cheek resting on one of the patches on his robe. She leaned against his chest, luxuriating in the warmth and strength of his body, breathing in the scent of him. Gaius gently rocked her back and forth. He kissed her on the top of her head.
“Lucky and I are off to the alchemy lab,” Siggy called over his shoulder. “See ya.”
Rachel waved without moving anything but her hand. The rest of her stayed pressed tightly against her boyfriend. With the fog so close around them, it was as if they were in their own private world.
“Are you okay?” Gaius murmured into her hair, squeezing her tightly. “I heard you were kidnapped by crazy cultists!”
“Wha…? Oh!” Rachel brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face and straightened her cap. “Oh, was that only yesterday? Yeah. I’m okay.”
Gaius drew back and peered into her face, searching it. “Has something else happened?”
“Yes, last night…” Rachel began eagerly. Then, her voice went flat. “The princess doesn’t want me to tell you.”
Gaius’s whole face fell. He looked utterly crestfallen. “I rather don’t blame her. Of course, she’s angry with us. After you trusted us, and then Mrs. Egg died? Vlad is really upset about this. He and his father are working to find the leak. He wants you to know that when they find the culprit, the person will be suitably punished.”
Rachel stared at Gaius, who looked much more sincere than his normal casual demeanor. He had not turned the accusation on her. The heat of embarrassment moved slowly through her cheeks. How could she have thought so badly of him?
Wait!
She did have proof!
“Gaius!” Rachel grabbed his shoulder. “It’s not Vlad’s fault!”
His whole face became alert. “Why do you say that?”
“You weren’t the only person we told,” explained Rachel. “The princess told the dean. The dean told the Agents.”
“You think the Wisecraft is compromised?”
Rachel took a deep breath, sorting her thoughts. She spoke rapidly. “Do you remember what a short time it was between when you and I told Vlad about Juma O’Malley’s mom, and when that plane nearly hit the school?”
“Do I remember? I was standing dead center, in the dean’s office, watching the Giant Silvery Jumbo Jet of Winged Death come right for me! Vlad said he could see you and Sigfried. That you saved us.”
Rachel blushed deeply. She had hoped no one would find out about her part. She had not thought about the fact that some people could see through chameleon elixir. Lucky had even warned them that Von Dread could see through the dragon’s invisibility.
“That’s neither here nor there.” She hurried on. “The point is: you showed me the picture. You and I told Vlad. We all went to meet Juma and escorted him to the dean’s. The dean called the Agents. The Agents took him off campus. And the plane showed up just afterwards.”
“Right. I remember. Is there a connection?”
“That plane went haywire because Juma’s mother made it do that. Serena O’Malley’s a technomancer.”
“Serena O’Malley?” asked Gaius. “The same woman who murdered Mrs. Egg, right?”
“Yes. Exactly.” Rachel pressed. “And she had to be on campus, to control the plane.”
“So…you’re wondering why she showed up right then?” Gaius’s mind leapt rapidly. “Right after the Agents were called to talk to her son?”
“Exactly!” Rachel nodded. “Even if no one at the Wisecraft offices is voluntarily working for Veltdammerung, someone could be geased.”
“Vlad certainly didn’t have time to tell his father about Juma!” Gaius continued, excitedly. “You can’t call people off campus except in the Glass Room downstairs. So, that leak couldn’t have been from his father’s people! So, the first time probably wasn’t them either—considering that it was the same person, Serena O’Malley, who received the secret information!”
“Exactly!” Rachel repeated, smiling.
Gaius let go of her and grabbed her shoulders. “I’ve got to tell him! Right now.”
“Oh. Okay.” Rachel’s voice sounded thin and tinny.
“Afterwards, I want to hear all about last night! Oh, and I need your help!”
Four more glorious words had never been spoken.
“You need my help?” breathed Rachel.
“Definitely! If you’re willing. Meet me in our hallway in about twenty minutes!”
Rachel ran eagerly through the fog toward Roanoke Hall and her favorite abandoned hallway on the fifth floor. Our hallway, he had called it. The thought glowed like a warm coal inside her. She spun around for joy in the midst of the fog-covered commons.
Too late, she realized she was not alone. The first person she saw, Agravaine Stormhenge, looked entirely charmed by her fey behavior. The college senior, who was the Dare Hall Senior Resident for the boys’ side—and whom Rachel secretly thought of as “Sigfried grown-up and calm”— was walking across the lawn with his fencing helmet atop his sandy curls, and his gear bag thrown over one shoulder. The whiteness of the bag glowed against the dimness of the fog. He winked at her.
Her elation was short lived. Agravaine was not the only one on the commons. A group of older Dare upper school students were making their way to the gym. They regarded her with mocking grins. Rachel recognized Claus Andrews, Arun Malik, Katie Thebes, Lena Ilium, and John Darling. They chatted loudly as they headed across the grass, their voices carrying through the fog.
“Did you know that little girl is actually like eleven?” asked Lena, a slim young woman with auburn hair and a model’s symmetry to her features. Rachel happened to know that Lena was her brother Peter’s secret crush.
“They shouldn’t have let her come to the upper school so young,” scoffed the super-athletic Katie Thebes, the girls’ champion for the upper school at Track and Broom. She wore her arm in a sling, the result of her latest daring stunt. Rumor had it she had been injured so many times that the nurse was reluctant to further enchant her. “She should be in the lower school with other children her age.”
“Peter and Laurel are idiots for letting their little sister date that idiot Valiant,” said Arun, a tall Arabian boy with jet-black hair wearing dark glasses, who spoke with an Egyptian accent.
“I know!” cried Lena. “What are they thinking?”
“Peter and Laurel?” smirked John Darling, running a hand across his short, unruly, black hair. “What’s Valiant thinking? I realize he’s a first-class jackass, but who’d want to date such a short scrawny thing? It’s disgusting! She doesn’t even have breasts.”
“Yeah,” Claus Andrews’s mop of white-blond hair shook as he laughed. “When he cops a feel, what’s there to feel up?”
Their mocking laughter rang in Rachel’s ears. She ducked her head and ran. Her face remained calm, until the fog had closed in around her like a protective cloak. Then, she stopped holding the pain at bay.
It struck her like a stallion at full gallop.
Darling was such an eejit! The others did not bother her so much. Lena had sounded concerned for her, and Claus Andrews was his class’s clown—hardly even worthy of her contempt. John Darling’s words, however, reverberated in her thoughts over and over.
This was the boy she had adored for three years? This was the boy over whom she had hesitated to accept Gaius’s offer to be her boyfriend? Her cheeks burned so hot they ached.
One thought cheered her up. John Darling was not a girl. That meant Siggy would have no compunction about taking him on. The hair-on-fire look might suit Mr. Darling. Or maybe Siggy could conjure another skunk. The soaked-with-flaming-skunk-spray-and-stinks-to-high-heaven style might suit him, too.
Rachel sat on the table in the abandoned upper hallway that was her private study place. Beside her was the rock she used for spell practice. Across from her was the suit of armor that stood beneath the high round window. Through this window, she could barely make out, in the thick fog, one of the many towers rising above Roanoke Hall. Normally, a whole forest of spires and belfries were visible. The only other object in the hallway was a trash can she had brought up so that she would have a large object to manipulate with her spells.
The air was stuffy, but not as dusty as it had been a month ago. Her numerous wind blasts had put an end to that. Still, she wished she could open the window.
As she sat waiting, Rachel contemplated: what might Gaius want her to do?
Her initial jubilation at being asked to help slowly drained to a more reasonable curiosity. When he first asked her, she assumed he meant help filling his wand—the project he had been working on non-stop for the last three weeks. But it probably wasn’t that. He probably had some simple question, or wanted her take on what to wear to a party, which was a question boys asked girls in books. Frankly, if she were to be brutally honest, whatever happened next was likely to be a disappointment.
She wanted so much to tell Gaius everything that had occurred recently; to wow him; to dazzle him; to watch his eyes fill with wonder as she revealed her marvelous secrets. But something would surely interrupt them. Something always did. Either he would have to go. Or she would have to go. Or, worst of all, he would listen but not care.
She doubted it would be that. Still, it was wise to be philosophical. So very little had gone right for her of late. It would hurt less if she kept her expectations low.
It was not that her life had been so bad. Wonderful things had happened. But most of them she could not share with anyone. Like meeting an Elf. Or discovering she was immune to the Spell of True Recitation and geases. Or choosing to sacrifice her life to save the world and then being spared.
Things nobody else knew.
Except, of course, the Raven.
Rachel slipped from the table and began to pace. She stalked out into the main hall and leaned against one of the windows overlooking the reflecting lake. The glass was cool against her forehead and nose, especially on the spot where the bruise had been, though now only a faint tingle remained. Normally, the whole campus would have lain before her, but all she could see now was mist.
Standing there, Rachel again stared into the fog. She thought of her friends: the princess who could not see obvious connections; Sigfried who lived in the present, unconcerned with even the largest threats; Joy and Zoë, who looked to Nastasia, as if she were the font of all wisdom. Even Valerie, who was so clever about practical things, seemed lost when it came to tracking and comprehending the significance of magical events. Rachel recalled again what had happened in the infirmary, how she and Valerie had carefully laid out the next steps for their nameless group to take, and everyone had praised the princess.
Was she truly too young to be at Roanoke? Should she have stayed home until next year and come with students her own age? Was she really just the freaky dwarf genius Sigfried had so humorously named her?
Staring into the fog, she was reminded of another misty day. As with all her memories, her recollection of it was as crisp and clear as if it had only just occurred. She had stood on the balcony of her room at Gryphon Park. Behind her had been her enormous dark wood-paneled bedroom with its walk-in fireplace and its pink canopy bed with lacy curtains and collec-tion of favorite plush animals. To her right, as she looked off the balcony, had risen the Old Castle. Before her, over the moat and across the lawns, had stretched the fanciful shapes of the topiary gardens, beyond which lay the boxwood maze, the lake, the forest, and, high above, about half a mile away, the ruins on Gryphon Tor. That day, however, she could see none of this. The fog lay so thick over moors that she could hardly see as far as the yew figures of elephants and winged horse on the other side of the moat or the stone statue of a giant carrying a child that was directly below her.
Beside her had stood her grandmother, The Duchess of Devon. She was a tall, severe woman who wore her steel gray hair in a tight bun and still dressed in the Victorian gowns that had been popular in her youth. They had been talking of inconsequential matters, and Rachel had innocently corrected her grandmother on some point that the older woman had forgotten.
“You are far too clever for your own good,” her grandmother had snapped.
Rachel, who had only ever been praised for her cleverness by her parents and grandfather, had gazed at her grandmother in puzzlement.
The Duchess had frowned down at her diminutive granddaughter. Her voice had barked like a drill sergeant. “Cleverness is the curse of women, grandchild. Nobody wants a woman to demonstrate intelligence. You will learn this when you are grown. They will not thank you for your insights. They will not cherish your achievements. They will not praise you, as His Grace and your father do. This gift that blooms like a precious flower—” Her clenched hand lifted, unfolding, and then shot forward as if snatching something from the air. “One day you will wish you could pluck it from you and trample it underfoot.”
Rachel had not known what to say. The two of them had stared into the mist. The skin of her grandmother’s hands had been a bloodless white. Rachel had been too young to realize this was because she held her fists so tightly that her nails were biting into her palms, but she recognized it now.
Armed with this realization, she saw the entire incident with new eyes. It had never occurred to her six-year-old self that her grandmother could have been talking about her own life. That the life of an intelligent and talented sorceress—who had lived through the Victorian Age, through the Depression, through both World Wars—might have been fraught with difficulty. Rachel had not known at the time that Amelia Griffin had abandoned her vows as a Vestal Virgin, weakening the Sacred Flame over which she had stood guard, out of love for Rachel’s grandfather—after Blaise Griffin’s first family had been slaughtered. She had not even understood that the death of her father’s younger brother Emrys, who had died right here at Roanoke, fighting the Terrible Five at the age of seventeen, meant that her grandmother had lost one of her two children. Little Rachel had only understood that, once again, her exacting and prickly grandparent disapproved of her for reasons that she could not understand.
There on the balcony in the fog, her ordinarily-standoffish grandmother had dropped to one knee. She had seized Rachel by both shoulders, her normally-distant eyes blazing. “But don’t you ever give in, Lady Rachel Jade Griffin! Intelligence is a gift, no matter how often life tries to teach you otherwise. Don’t you ever give in and let the forces of ignorance win!”
“I won’t, Grandmother,” whispered thirteen-year-old Rachel hoarsely, her forehead still pressed against the cold glass. “I won’t give in.”
Out there before her now, invisible behind the fog, lay the memorial garden with its many shrines, where offerings could be made to numerous gods. Rachel wished, not for the first time since she came to school, that her family had chosen a household god—someone she could pray to for guidance, for strength. She wished recklessly that some deity would manifest, as in the tales of old, and offer her comfort in return for loyalty.
No figure appeared amidst thunder and lightning. The only moving thing visible on the lawn below was Kitten Fabian’s familiar, padding its way across the damp grass. The little Comfort Lion, a golden-maned feline the size of a house cat, stopped and turned its head. Its golden eyes seemed to stare straight up at Rachel. It was probably a coincidence, but an eerie horripilation ran across Rachel’s body.
She thought back three seconds.
In her memory, the Lion was gigantic—bigger than elephants, bigger than houses, bigger than trees. It looked down from the sky, its expression reminding Rachel of Mistletoe, when he sat watching a hole from which he expected a mouse to emerge.
There was no mistaking it.
Its great golden eyes were focused directly upon Rachel.