Over the next couple of weeks, the weather grew colder, and students buckled down to their studies in earnest. Rachel and her friends spent more time studying and less time in frivolous pursuits, except for Sigfried, who aced every practical exam but seldom handed in homework assignments. As promised, Rachel wrote out his paper on Shaman of the World, carefully inventing errors she thought Sigfried might make to help it look authentic. She did a passable job, but it made her feel tremendously uncomfortable. She swore that she would never again agree to do this.
Next time she wanted a favor from Sigfried, she would find something less dishonest to offer him.
As the days progressed in to weeks, Rachel did not get to spend as much time with Gaius as she might have liked. He was studying hard to make up for the time he had lost while he was working on restoring his wand, and she had to spend her Saturdays in detention—cleaning and polishing equipment for Mr. Chanson. However, Gaius did come by their hallway and help her put some paralyzing hexes, tiathelu cantrips, and wind blasts into her wand. He even cast a few Glepnir bonds for her and put those in as well. He also took her down to the Roanoke Alchemical Shoppe, underneath Raleigh Hall, and helped her pick out her own cinqfoil. Eventually, he asked to borrow her wand so he and William could examine it and let her know more about what it could do. Rachel agreed.
She searched the news glass she had subscribed to for anything that might be a hint of the actions of the demon Morax but could find nothing. Did that mean that the demon had been caught and stopped? Or that it was still at large? It was at times like this that she wished that she actually had the Wisecraft contacts that Von Dread believed her to have. Of course, Von Dread did have such contacts, and Gaius insisted that they had not heard anything either.
She longed for the time when her father would arrive. He might not be willing to share sensitive information, but surely he would at least let her know if the problem had been resolved. Meantime, Gaius assured her that Dread had shared the information they had discovered in the library with the appropriate authorities, and the princess had as well. Hopefully, no news meant that all was well. Yet, whenever she thought about the demon—about the dark, shadowy shape of Moloch coalescing in the tower—an odd pain formed in her chest and refused to go away.
Thinking of her father often sparked the number one conflict troubling her. She knew secrets no one should know and secrets she had promised not to tell. The question of whom she should share this knowledge with weighed on her thoughts constantly.
To whom did she owe the greatest loyalty?
During the crisis that struck her during the first week of school, Rachel had picked Gaius as the person to be loyal to, first and foremost. But that decision alone was not enough to sort out her troubles. What did she do with issues of conflict between her various friends and loved ones? Did she put Siggy before Sandra? Her father before the princess?
After some thought, she came to the decision that she had to weigh her loyalty to each person around her and form a strict hierarchy. She spent hours contemplating her loyalty chart and moving names up and down the rungs of its ladder. Gaius was always at the top. Currently, he was followed by Sigfried and Nastasia, both on the second rung. Then, the Raven. Then, her father, then everyone else.
Classes progressed apace. In Music, they finished reviewing the song for dispersing a low-hanging fog and moved on to the basic principles of songs of protection. Rachel had no trouble memorizing the notes. Convincing her fingers, however, to move in the right order against the holes of the flute was another matter entirely. She played so badly on one song that she made a desultory attempt at practicing her flute that night.
But her heart was not in it.
In Science, they read Aristotle’s On Magic. On Thursday, Mr. Fisher taught them the spider-cling elixir, which granted the drinker the power to climb walls like a spider. Rachel and Nastasia worked quietly and produced a decent elixir, while Zoë and Siggy kept snickering and addressing each other as “Parker.” Sigfried called the tutor over and asked him why alchemists with elixirs did not rule the world. Mr. Fisher demonstrated by having Siggy cling to a wall, just a foot up, and then using the Word of Ending. Sigfried instantly fell to the floor.
“As you see.” Fisher smiled and bowed to a scattering of ap-plause.
In Geometry, they were still studying the first book of Euclid, working through Propositions 20 through 28. Mrs. MacDannan also covered the anti-magical properties of running water and its usefulness as a ward to stop ghosts, vampires, and other undead—along with the usefulness of a twig of a broom and salt. There were, however, some spirits so strong that even running water did not stop them. One of these, the tutor warned, was the Headless Horseman, who led the Wild Hunt up the Hudson from Sleepy Hollow at midnight every Halloween on his way to the Dead Men’s Ball—a gathering of the unquiet dead that took place that night at Bannerman’s Mansion, on Roanoke Island, just north of the school. Mrs. MacDannan warned them to stay safely inside the wards of the school on Halloween night.
The other issue that arose in math class was, as the year progressed and the terrors of the first week drew further away, the Thaumaturgy students from Drake Hall, who had all been geased by Dr. Mordeau, began to recover from the shell-shocked state in which they had spent the month of September. They began talking loudly again and returning to their previous arrogant behavior. Rachel had not yet come to their attention again. She felt certain that it was only a matter of time, however, before Cydney Graves would remember her grievances, and Rachel would again become the target of her malice.
Language was mainly grammar and reading Shakespeare—including the three plays lost to the Unwary, A Midwinter Day’s Folly, The Wylde Hunt, and Emrys Myrddin—Shakespeare’s take on King Arthur. They also learned two new cantrips: bey-athe, the basic shield Gaius had taught her, and muria—which technically meant “bringing into being”—the cantrip used by conjurers to manifest their creations.
In True History, they were still studying early humans and their relationship to the magical world. This included the origins of certain ancient ceremonies, and how Demeter, while she was mourning the loss of Persephone, taught agriculture to tribal hunter-gatherers. In art, the students continued their efforts to conjure a hoop. Mrs. Heelis excused Rachel from this project and let her spend the class delving into the books on drawing. She read book after book, learning the rudimentary steps and discovering which parts of the process her perfect recall aided and which it could not.
Drawing turned out to be exactly what she had been looking for—an activity she could do in class, while tutors reviewed material they had previously covered. Unless the tutors walked around the large central table and looked over her shoulder, they could not tell whether she was drawing or taking notes. This meant she had something she could do, other than listen to them recite again and again the same material she had already memorized, and still not appear rude.
As she drew, she imagined being a librarian for the Library of All Worlds. Just the name filled her with awe. What would such a library be like? To what strange and magical places might she travel in pursuit of it—far vistas, distant worlds, the gateway to an undiscovered country in which yet unknown secrets lurked? Inspired by this thought, she drew a sketch of a hand pushing aside the branches of a weeping willow to glimpse beyond a magnificent rushing waterfall. The completed picture looked nothing like what she imagined. It was all ink blots and wiggly lines, but now she had a goal, something she wished to portray with her new skill. She also drew a picture of the vision she had seen in the Elf’s garden, a forest growing atop the canopy of a second forest. That also looked nothing as it should.
She also drew pictures of the Raven, though she burned them afterwards. She did not want anyone to see them, even though her skill was still not so good that he was likely to be recognized—in either of his guises. As she drew, she daydreamed about a day when she might do something to repay him for his faith in her. Of course, she thought, with a tiny smile, he might be rather pleased with her for stopping Mortimer Egg from commanding the tenebrous mundi to tear down his Wall. Still, she wished she could do more for him, that he would ask something of her, some task she could perform, preferably something difficult and great.
The quiet activity of drawing had a disadvantage. With no disasters to occupy her, the shock, fear, and horror she had so cleverly cast aside in order to remain clear-headed during the emergencies came crashing back.
They struck with the force of a run-away wrecking ball.
She would be sitting in class drawing, or in the library with her friends, and suddenly she would discover that she was trembling, as she vividly relived the moment Moloch threw Sigfried through the wall of the keep tower; or Sigfried lying in the duck pond; or watching her father fly toward a head-on collision with the side of the same keep; or seeing Agent Carlson crash down atop the standing candelabra, its iron tip protruding from his chest; or the looks on the faces of the pilots of the runaway plane as it flew directly toward Roanoke Hall; or the sight of Mr. Fuentes lying on the gravel, bleeding after falling because she had paralyzed him to keep him from killing Valerie; or seeing Mr. Fisher, bloody and unconscious on the floor, his glasses splattered with his blood; or the vision Nastasia had showed them in the thinking glass where Gaius and Locke lay dead while Dr. Mordeau killed the defiant Von Dread; or Nastasia’s description of Juma O’Malley’s mother snapping the neck of Mrs. Egg.
These memories would crowd in on her until she felt as if there were a constant buzzing of voices at the edge of her consciousness, all clamoring to be heard. If she did not resist, the buzzing grew louder, and she felt as if she were falling.
Rachel never let herself find out what would have happened next.
Each time it started, she resisted. She would throw herself into actively studying or practicing. She was finding it harder and harder to concentrate, but if she kept herself supremely focused, she could keep what felt like the growing madness at bay. Practicing in the hallway was by far the most effective method. Or flying. She spent a great deal of her free time on her steeplechaser. So long as she kept her attention on something practical spells, the past terrors left her alone.
Yet she knew this was only postponing the issue, not solving it.
She recognized this buzzing, this feeling of falling, and the encroaching darkness that sometimes accompanied it. She had experienced it after her grandfather died. She tried drowning out the buzzing by socializing with her friends, but this was as likely to backfire as to help. When they were open and inclusive, she could become swept up in their activities and good cheer. But every so often, they snipped at one another, or the girls chose her as the person to gang up against and tease that day. Their teasing was humorous, but it still made her feel excluded, which caused a gap, and into the gap rushed everything she was striving to avoid.
The trouble she had being among her friends did not extend to Sigfried. He did not ask anything of her. Spending time with him and Lucky was always immediate and fun. But spending time with Sigfried usually meant spending time with the others, and she was finding it harder and harder to get along with Nastasia.
Rachel wanted so much to please her friend the princess, but she also wanted to spend time with Gaius. She wished she could be getting to know his group of friends. Yet, even during the brief time she spent with him at the Knight’s meeting or after classes, she could feel disapproval radiating from Nastasia. The princess never hesitated to remind her of how unreliable Vladimir Von Dread was—how he had caused Nastasia to disobey her father, and how he had leaked the information that caused the death of Mrs. Egg. Additionally, anyone who worked for a scoundrel, such as Gaius, must in the long run prove himself unreliable. Rachel tried to explain to Nastasia her theory as to why she thought that Mrs. Egg’s death had not been caused by Von Dread, but Nastasia refused to consider the possibility that the Wisecraft could be at fault.
The only person with whom she felt entirely at ease was Gaius. When he was near, the buzzing fell silent, and she felt like an ordinary young woman. It was as if the tempest within her became calm and balmy when he approached. She wondered if this was because she had picked him as the center of her world, the one person she trusted above all others, or if that thought had cause and effect reversed, and she had picked him partially because he had this wonderful calming effect on her thoughts.
She loved him all the more for it.
Occasionally, as she stared out the window at the chaos of fall colors, having perhaps just finished a drawing with no new subject in mind, she could keep the fear and sorrow at bay by just thinking about Gaius. She recalled their time together in the fog-shrouded tower, reliving the highlights: hugging him for the first time in the misty herb garden; leaning against him in the bell tower, his arm around her shoulder; and, ah, the kisses.
She dwelt for a time on their private training sessions together, in the hallway and at the Knights meetings. From there, her thoughts slid to the moment when Von Dread winked at her. The memory of it made her feel a little giddy. She knew he must not wink at many girls. He could not maintain his imposing demeanor if he behaved thus toward everyone. She did not know what she had done to cause him to let his guard down slightly, but it delighted her.
But what else did one expect from a young man who managed to look commanding and magnetic even in his sweat pants—a young man who jumped onto oncoming jets about to crash? Her imagination drifted to her previous daydream, in which the looming prince had curtly informed her that he had chosen her to be his queen and planned to wed her as soon as she came of age. Previously, she had imagined that he had kissed her. (Her imagination skirted away from recalling the fantasized kiss itself. That would be disloyal.) What might come next?
In her new daydream, she imagined defying him, her eyes flashing as she vowed her eternal loyalty to his lieutenant, Mr. Valiant. She imagined him trying to kiss her again. She imagined stomping on his foot.
By the following week, her fantasies had altered. In her imagination, the tall, looming college boy had already kissed her, and now she daydreamed about how she dealt with the affront. She pictured various reactions. Sometimes, she was cool as an ice sculpture. Other times, she was frantic and panicky and behaved far more emotionally than she would ever act in real life. At first, she decided Gaius knew what Dread had done and would try to protect her—without offending his boss, if he could. This fantasy scenario often led to a second duel, only this time Gaius turned Dread into a sheep!
But Rachel was not the sort of girl who found it pleasant to have men fighting over her. So, by the end of the second week, she had switched to yet a new scenario where, in which, to protect the friendship between Dread and Gaius, she did not tell her boyfriend about the older boy’s advances. Thus, Gaius was puzzled as she continued to do increasingly dramatic things to avoid his grim boss. This storyline was filled with angst and heartbreak, and once she found her cheeks covered with tears.
Yet, this imaginary anguish was preferable to reliving the real horrors that threatened to overwhelm her. Overall, Rachel found her fantasy scenarios quite satisfying.
A week before Halloween, their music teacher, Miss Cyrene, called for a review—a practical, where the students were to demonstrate their command of the enchantments they had learned thus far. Rachel practiced with the other students in class, dutifully preparing to demonstrate her less than stellar control over breezes and will-o-wisps. She hesitated to show off her skill at whistling, partially because it was only useful for hexes. Defensive enchantments, as hexes were officially called, required short, crisp notes. This she found easy to reproduce. But summoning enchantments, such as that used to call domestic will-o-wisps, required more elaborate melodies.
Rachel knew that it was possible to whistle whole symphonies. She occasionally heard her parents whistling Bach or Brahms, as they walked the long hallways of Gryphon Park. However, she herself did not have the sustained breath control necessary to accomplish this. Even if she had, it was one thing to resist the tickling of the magic that rushed through her lips for a few short notes, it was another thing entirely to maintain control of her lips under the tingling onslaught of such magical forces for a sustained length of time.
Luckily, at least half the class was not significantly better than she was. The canticle students from Spencer were not particularly skilled musicians, except for Sebastian Powers—whose father was a Member of the Parliament of the Wise and whose grandfather had been the previous Grand Inquisitor before Cain March. Sebastian had been playing since he was a small child and was a superb musician.
The majority of the Dare students, on the other hand, had played instruments before they arrived at Roanoke. Some of them, like the princess and Sakura Suzuki, played amazingly. Brunhilda Winters had played the French horn in her junior high marching band, and Kitten Fabian had performed at piano recitals since she was a child. Then there were others, like Seth Peregrine and Zoë, who claimed they were good musicians, but Rachel wasn’t entirely certain the ruckus they played could properly be called music.
From their dainty tutor’s expression, Miss Cyrene agreed.
All over the classroom, her classmates began tuning their instruments, preparing for the practical. Banjo and accordion warred with shamisen and shakuhachi. Ian MacDannan had bagpipes of a red and black tartan, a cornet, and a lap harp. He kept switching back and forth among the three. Seth and David Jordan had lost interest in the assignment entirely. With their bass guitar and guitar, they broke into a song about a hound dog.
It was because of moments like these that students almost never brought their familiars to music class. Too many ended up either howling or scampering away in fear.
As more students tuned-up and began playing, the will-o-wisps zipped to and fro, responding to competing summonings. Soon, the poor, little, glowing lights seemed to be listing to the side, as if they had become punch drunk. A few students managed to keep their small group of will-o-wisps nearby. Princess Nastasia had coaxed her will-o-wisps into circling her head, like a Swedish candle crown; while Sigfried kept altering the summoning song, trying to get his wisps to dive-bomb one another.
Miss Cyrene finally gently insisted that Ian pick a single instrument for the demonstration. She called some wisps to her, using her voice alone. The sound was so glorious that everyone in the room paused. Listening to the beautiful singing, Rachel titled her head slightly and peered at their bird-like tutor. Tilting her head the other way, Rachel was reminded of a woodcut illustration in an ancient bestiary. It came from the same book as the hidden page with description of an Angel that she had recalled only after the Elf gave her the memory-protecting Rune.
“Psst,” she whispered to Nastasia and Joy, “doesn’t our tutor look a lot like a siren?”
“Very likely,” Nastasia replied graciously, from where she sat strumming the red, blue, and transparent strings of her harp. “Members of the Wise are all descended from some kind of supernatural creature or another. That is how we acquire our talents for sorcery.”
“It’s why everyone here is so beautiful,” chirped Joy. Then she blushed and pulled on her mouse brown hair. “Except for me. I’m plain as a pancake.”
Rachel felt a moment of sympathy for the other girl. She, too, had noticed that a great deal of the students seemed to be prettier or handsomer than she was. In their class, no one else was as gorgeous as Sigfried and the princess, in face, in the entire school, only Von Dread and Rory Wednesday compared. Still, a great many of the other students were strikingly attractive, and Rachel often found herself feeling plain in comparison.
“Unusually beautiful or unusually ugly,” said Wendy Darling, who had been practicing nearby with Brunhilda Winters. She spoke sincerely and without the brashness that many of the other American girls displayed. She placed her trombone on the table beside Joy, her dark hair floating around her face like a lovely thundercloud. Her blue eyes were startling, both intelligent and intense. “Some of us are descended from the beautiful ones. The Plant Danu. Other gods. Noble fey. Others are descended from the Unseelie, or other entities from the less pleasant side of the fey.”
Rachel was a bit in awe of Wendy, though she seldom interacted with the other girl. The daughter of Six Musketeers James Darling and Ellyllon MacDannan Darling, Wendy had inherited her famous mother’s love of dance. She spent her free time at a ballet studio in the gym and wore dusty rose leg warmers that peeked out beneath her robes.
“Like Lola Spong,” Joy shuddered. “She’s said to be de-scended from a troll or an ogre.”
Rachel, whose run-in with the toad-like Miss Spong had been less than pleasant, found it easy to believe.
“Is that why?” asked California cheerleader, Brunhilda, who preferred to be called Hildy. Wendy’s best friend was a gymnast and an all-round athlete who had grown up among the Unwary. The two girls had joined the fencing team together and had bonded over their shared interest in athletics and the cute boys on the sports teams.
“Why what?” asked Joy.
“Poor, little, glowy buggies.” Hildy lowered her French horn and watched her will-o-wisps zip back toward their night hood in the ceiling. “They’re pooped. But, back to your point: I’ve been, like, wondering about that. People say Hollywood is filled with pretty people. So many good-looking kids head out there to try their hand at film and TV that even the waiters and the clerks in the airport are drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, serious hotties! And they’re all like, ‘Look at this face!’” Hildy stuck her neck out and pointed all her fingers at her cheeks. “Think I’ll make it in the movies?’ And my friends and I are like, ‘Yeah, you and a million others. Now finish bagging my groceries, bag dude.’
“But when it comes to pretty faces, Roanoke takes the cake—and the platter and the table it’s sitting on. There are people at school—like that upper school senior, Rory Wednesday or our princess here—who are so beautiful, that it makes you want to, like, gouge out your eyes after you see them. Because you know you will never see anything so exquisite, ever again.”
“Did you know that Joshua March once kidnapped her? Rory, I mean.” Wendy’s startling blue eyes sparkled. “It was back when she was twelve, and he was ten. He climbed in her window, put a pillow case over her head, and tried to fly her out in a kenomanced bag. He would have gotten in big trouble…except his father is the one who gets people in trouble. So, Joshua got off easy. Oddly, he and Rory been friends ever since. And no one’s friends with the Marches—No one wants to risk being questioned by their father.”
“Where did all this happen?” asked Hildy.
“At the lower school,” Wendy explained. “I was nine.”
“You went to the lower school?” Zoë’s eyebrows rose. “I figured someone must have actually gone there. But you’re the first person I’ve met who admitted to it.”
Wendy said, “I was a day student. My brother Michael’s there now. He still goes home on weekends.”
“Didn’t realize the Marches and the Wednesdays went to the Lower School?” said Joy.
Hildy shivered. “Weird to imagine being here since kinder-garten.”
“Seven,” said Wendy. “The lower school starts at age seven.”
“Seven.” Hildy shrugged. “Close enough. Hey, did you know that Rory Wednesday’s hair has blue…” she waved her hand, patting her head. “…what are they called? You know. Those thingies where some top hairs are a different color from the others?”
“Highlights?” Zoë added pale green strands to her dark green hair.
“Yeah, highlights! That’s it!” Hildy’s head bobbed from the rapidness of her nodding. “Blue! Oh, and whose idea was it to have a high school and a college—both with freshmen, juniors, et cetera—in the same building? No one can ever tell what you mean when you say someone’s a senior! Are they an upper school senior? Or a college senior?”
“I have blue highlights, too, though not many.” Nastasia peered at her own golden locks and held out a hair. “Usually, they are only visible in the brightest of sunlight.”
Rachel leaned close, peering. Sure enough, the lock she held out was a pale blue.
“Could there be a relationship?” Wendy asked. Pointing her toe, she lifted her foot onto the table and stretched over it, bouncing.
Something about her expression made her face resemble that of her older brother. A lump rose in Rachel’s throat, as she recalled overhearing John Darling’s comments about her. A renewed desire to see Sigfried skunk the louse ignited in her breast.
“What might it be?” asked Joy. “What kind of fey has blue hair? Sea nymphs? Stromkarls? Rhine Maidens? Rory Wednesday is known to be descended from the most famous of the Rhine Maidens. Maybe the princess here is, too.”
“My boss, the P.E. teacher Mr. Chanson, has a steely blue tint to his hair,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “He’s also extremely hand-some.”
Behind her, Astrid Hollywell lowered her banjo and sighed. Astrid was a painfully shy young woman with caramel skin and tight black curls, who always wore a scarf over her black robes. When Rachel looked at her, she blushed and ducked her head.
Astrid murmured, “Mr. Chanson is very handsome.”
Rachel threw her a conspiratorial smile and a wink. Astrid kept her head down, but the corners of her eyes crinkled with pleasure.
“Isn’t there anyone in the World of the Wise who’s just normal?” asked Hildy.
“You mean other than Joy?” quipped Zoë. She held up her Maori war trumpet and gave the pukaea two long toots, producing a fountain of multi-colored sparks. “Nope. Just look at us. The princess is divine. Wendy is like a Pre-Raphaelite dream. You’re a California golden girl, Hildy. Griffin’s a little China doll. And me?” She spread her arms and shrugged. “I’m like a goddess.” She flipped her short green locks. “A goddess of hair.”
“Yeah, like, other than Joy.” Hildy snickered. “Just kidding, O’Keefe. You’re cute enough…at least by the standards of everywhere but Hollywood and here standards. And not everyone in the room is a total hottie. Those Spenser Hall kids are pretty normal-looking. Well, except for Amaranth Kyle, but she always looks like she’s had a rat-hair day. And Suki Wong. But Asian girls are, like, double hot. So what can the rest of us do?”
Zoë laughed. Joy pouted. Rachel felt uncomfortable and looked down.
“In central California,” Hildy added, “we have all these beautiful people I mentioned, but even we had some ordinary people. People with acne, or on crutches, or something. Here, I don’t see anybody with, like, birthmarks, or deformities, or anything—much less people with actual disabilities. Do they not let people with disabilities into Roanoke?”
Zoë shrugged. “Magic heals everything.”
“Not everything.” Rachel looked up again. “There are two blind upperclassmen, Verthandi Odinson and her brother Hod. They’re seers. I think they’re descended from Norns.”
“Wait…” Hildy leaned forward. Her blonde hair with its streaks of pale gold fell across her face. “Rory Wednesday is descended from Odin, but the Odinsons are descended from Norns?”
The others laughed. Wendy lowered her foot and raised her other leg, stretching over that one. “They’re probably descended from Odin, too. To hear Grandma MacDannan talk, Odin got around.” Wendy’s intense blue eyes danced with amusement. “You’d think she had been personally scorned by the man. Er—god.”
“Maybe she has,” replied Rachel, who had heard all number of interesting stories about the uber-magical MacDannan family.
“I doubt it,” Zoë snorted, “no one has seen a real god in generations.”
Wendy put both feet on the floor and made an attempt to reign in her cloud of dark hair. “There’s a girl in the Lower School who’s in a wheelchair. She’ll be here next year, Kora Chandler. Her parents were performing Conjurers. There was an accident.”
“I heard about her,” Rachel said. “Mrs. Heelis told me when she was lecturing me on why I should never conjure improperly again.”
“Why didn’t they, like, fix her with magic?” Hildy asked.
Rachel felt herself go pale. “In the dream mist? If you get injured there, magic doesn’t work to heal…” Her voice trailed off, as a thought struck her.
Wendy nodded, her face sad. “Her parents died.”
“That is truly sad,” Nastasia said gravely. “Every child should have a parent. We must do our best to make her comfortable when she comes.”
Rachel glanced at Sigfried, who had managed to get his confused wisps to fly in a figure 8, but he had not heard them.
Rachel thought of the scrubby area behind Roanoke Hall—the place where magic did not work well. What if the boys who had caused the explosion that left the place resistant to magic had somehow drenched the place in the same mist that had made it impossible to heal Miss Chandler? She made a mental note to pursue the issue.
At the front of the room, Miss Cyrene watched the brooding Wulfgang Starkadder blast objects across the room with a wind produced by his accordion. Rachel looked at her thoughtfully and then turned to her friends again.
“But back to our tutor,” she said, “I didn’t mean ‘descendent from a siren’. I mean she looks like a real siren. Himerope—that’s her name, right?—that’s a real siren’s name.”
“That’s silly,” scoffed Joy. “Why would a real siren be here, teaching children?”
Rachel shrugged. “What else would a real siren do in our modern age?”
Rachel passed her practical—barely. She managed to summon only three of the tired, abused will-o-wisps, but apparently three were enough. Or maybe she passed because she was able to produce a reasonable gust of wind. It was not as strong as the gust she could have produced by whistling, but Miss Cyrene announced that it would do.
“Hey, other members of the Die Horribly While Debating Club,” Siggy came up between Rachel and Zoë, as the girls walked out of class, “Wheels, here, and I—”
“Wheels?” Joy asked. She and Nastasia were walking to Rachel’s right.
“Forrest. Our ride. The one who can get us to and fro,” Siggy explained, sticking his thumb out at Zoë. “Wheels.”
“Oh…Got it.” Joy nodded.
“You-know-who sent me a dream and asked me to bring Wheels to visit her.”
“Wait. Who-know-who?” Joy asked again.
“The fl-Eay.” Siggy stopped and cocked his head to the side. “Elf-Hay? F-Elay? Lucky, how do you say elf in Pig Latin.”
Lucky cocked his head in imitation of his master. “Fey? Lares? Lemur? Or is that Human-Latin. Wouldn’t the pig version be, ‘Soo-ii’?”
Rachel groaned when he said the word elf aloud. “Sigfried!”
“Huh? Anyway, the one whose name I have no idea how to hide wants to see Zoë.”
“We’re not supposed to tell!” Fear jagged at Rachel’s chest, as she recalled the Raven’s expression when he warned them that if more than three people knew of Illondria, it would lead to her death.
Siggy shrugged, unconcerned. “She asked me to bring Wheels. What am I supposed to do? Tell her, ‘No’? It’s her life. She must know how dangerous it is. Want to come?”
“We cannot go,” Nastasia said firmly, cutting off Rachel’s enthusiastic reaction before it got started. “The Roanoke Tree is off school grounds. We may not go there.”
“No, it’s not,” Rachel objected, feeling her face flush. This was the very conversation she had hoped to avoid. “The whole island belongs to the school.”
Nastasia frowned, her face severe. “Nonsense. Obviously, they meant the wards of the school. We cannot go, Sigfried. Tell…the person involved that she will have to come here. Or meet us in a dream.”
Nastasia walked on with firm purpose, as if the matter had been settled. Joy went with her. Rachel turned her head and met Sigfried’s eyes. With the slightest of motions, they nodded at each other.