by Amanda Marin
“Well … yeah …”
She rolls her eyes, and her glare intensifies. “I don’t get what you see in him—or in this entire ridiculous idea that you’re somehow smarter or more qualified than the Board of Nine to solve whatever’s going on out there.” She nods over her shoulder to the darkened window behind her, to the damaged city losing its soul behind that. “But this has to stop.”
The bottom has dropped out of my stomach so many times today that I’m starting to become numb to the feeling of it. “What do you mean? What’s your problem with Sebastian?”
“I don’t know. He just seems … off. There’s something strange about him. He shows up, and suddenly, all these ‘omens’ just start happening—”
“They were happening before he showed up at Brightling, too,” I remind her.
Her hands move to her hips like magnets. If we were outside, she’d be digging her heels into the ground by now. “What about the weird questions he asks? He seems to know almost nothing about our realm. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
I scoff. “Are you talking about that day in Inspiration Practicum when he asked about over-inspiring Mundanes?”
Kash is on a roll, though. She doesn’t even seem to hear my question. She just moves on rapidly to her next point, yet another complaint about Sebastian.
“Has he ever mentioned the name of the school he went to before Brightling? And what about the Muse he plans to pledge to? Have you even seen him inspire someone? He knows so much about you, but he reveals nothing!”
Her questions hit me like a series of sucker punches now. She doesn’t know what happened downstairs in the auditorium or how he started to open up. She’s being unfair. I want to tell her this, but the words get too mixed up in my head.
“W-where is this coming from?” I sputter instead. “He practically carried you back from Brambleton that day you hurt your ankle—”
“He’s a distraction, Bianca,” Kash interrupts. “And you have more important things to worry about—you have to graduate. You have to pass Poise and Charm, not to mention all your other classes.”
Here we go again with lectures and expectations.
“I am, Kash,” I tell her sharply, immediately on the defensive. “I went to class today, see?” I fluff up the skirt of my gown indignantly, as though the swishing of fabric alone proves my point.
“And what about other classes? How about your homework? Is that all done, too?”
My fingers curl into fists. It’s a good thing I already dropped my shoes—I probably would’ve snapped the heels off if I was still holding them. “You want to check my school bag for notes from the principal, too?” I snap. “You’re not my mom, Kash.”
“I know I’m not—I’m your friend,” she says bitterly. Tears well up in her eyes, and for the first time in our argument, her voice breaks and her bottom lip quivers. “I’ve been here for you for almost four years, and you’ve known Sebastian for what, like, four days? I need you, too, sometimes, you know.”
It’s been a little longer than four days since Sebastian showed up at Brightling, but given the circumstances, correcting her doesn’t seem like a good idea. Besides, her words strike something inside me. It could be the crack in her voice. It could be the tears that come with it. It could simply be that she has a point. A cleft seems to open in my chest, a cavern of cold and shadows, as a dark thought occurs to me.
“What do you mean? When did you need me? What are you talking about?” I ask softly. Worried, I reach out to brush her arm. “Kash, did something happen? Are you all right?”
She doesn’t answer me, though. She just wipes away an escapee tear, smearing the cream slathered on her face at the same time, and turns away.
“Just forget it,” she grumbles under her breath. Hurriedly, she wipes her hand clean on a nearby towel and scoops up her pillow off her bed. “I’m going to find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”
While I still stand there, gaping, wondering what’s going on, she pushes past me, heading for the door. The slam is so forceful it almost seems to shake the building, from the roof above the teachers’ apartments to the dance studios down in the basement.
11
Kash doesn’t answer my text messages. She’s punishing me, I’m sure. She doesn’t come back that night, either. I fall asleep clutching my phone with my freshly gnawed fingernails, still dressed in my gown. Mascara smears stain my pillowcase, and more questions race through my head than I’ve had in a long time.
Questions about what she’s hiding, why she’d act so strangely—so unlike her normally shy, quiet self.
Questions about Sebastian and if there’s any truth to Kash’s accusations about him.
Questions about whether or not kissing him was a huge mistake after all.
And questions about the Lost Scroll of Clio and what’s coming next.
The doubts torture me until I finally give in to exhaustion, unable to solve any of my problems.
In the morning, matters are even worse. Kash doesn’t come by the room for a change of clothes, and I don’t see her in the cafeteria either. I pick at my yogurt disinterestedly, listening to Sebastian go on about various theories that he came up with overnight regarding Clio’s prediction. I nod a lot. Just to be polite. My heart isn’t really in it. I miss Kash too much. Even one of her goody-two-shoes lectures would be welcome right now.
Afterward, I walk with Sebastian through the basement hallways toward his tap class. He knows the way by now. We both know he does. Neither of us is admitting it, though. I think we both like the time together.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
The question catches me off guard. Only when he asks do I realize that I have no idea what he’s said since we left the cafeteria.
I sigh. “I had a bad fight with Kash last night when I got back to my room. She hasn’t answered any of my texts and appears to be avoiding me.” I glance around us to prove my point: no Kash in sight.
One of Sebastian’s careless grins cracks his face. “That’s all? For a minute there, I was worried you were going to spring something else about yourself on me—like maybe you have some secret, male-modeling, Mundane boyfriend who’s going to beat me up for kissing you last night.”
Beside us, a couple of sophomores talking in the hall before class overhear and snicker. “Don’t let Melody Dillard hear you say that,” one of them calls after us.
My cheeks blaze. “No, there’s no Mundane boyfriend,” I tell him quickly. “There’s no boyfriend at all.”
He lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Phew … So what was this fight about? Did you tell her about what we found out in Clio’s Lost Scroll?” He lowers his voice when he adds the last part, careful not to attract even more attention to us—for which I’m grateful.
Still, my stomach does a series of nervous flip-flops. I look up at Sebastian when we pause outside the door to his dance studio, wishing I could drown the memory of all those terrible questions Kash asked about him. I don’t want to doubt him, but I can’t stand hearing her voice in my head accusing him, either. So I swallow hard and hijack the conversation.
“I keep meaning to ask you something,” I say, instead of answering his question. “Which Muse do you think you’ll pledge yourself to at graduation?”
There. I did it. I asked him something Kash mentioned. Something simple. A tiny test I’m sure he’ll pass.
Sebastian’s eyebrows wrinkle, confused. “Umm … That’s sort of off-topic, but if you absolutely have to know, I’m thinking I’ll go with Thalia, Muse of comedy.” His eyes twinkle mischievously as he adds, “It’d be a shame to let all my natural wittiness go to waste.”
Okay. He has picked his pledge. And it wasn’t even Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy—the darkest and rarest of Muses among us. That would’ve sent Kash off the deep end about him for sure. There’s one thing off my list of worries, at least.
Satisfied, I nod. “There’s one person who thinks you’re witty, anyway,” I
tease.
The chimes reverberate over the speaker system then. The start of first period, and I’m still all the way down in the basement. There’s no time for more quizzes—or more explanations. There’s only time for Sebastian to catch my hand and give it a quick squeeze before I dart back down the hall.
“Kash will come around, whatever it is,” he assures me.
But she doesn’t turn up to Inspiration Practicum later that morning, either. The space on my right where she would normally stand remains vacant, even after the chimes sound. During roll call, Ms. Applegate repeats her name three times, her placid gaze roving over all our faces, just to be sure Kash isn’t playing a trick on her like the Dillard twins have done in the past.
As Zelda Mackey—today’s first guinea pig—steps to the front of the room so Ms. Applegate can begin demonstrating the differences between inspiring action versus artwork, I lean over to Sebastian on my left.
“What if this is about more than Kash pouting about our fight? What if something happened to her?” I whisper.
His eyes bulge, a small sea enlarged to an ocean. “You mean if she’s hurt again?”
“Maybe … Or maybe she ran away—maybe she went home or something. She doesn’t live far away.”
“Would she do that?”
I shrug and then freeze as I remember something. “The other night, as she was going to bed, she mentioned going to Brambleton Terrace. She wanted to see the damage the fire did herself.”
Ms. Applegate’s willowy frame bends and turns in my direction. “Ms. Harper, as a direct descendent of Clio,” she says dreamily, “I think you’ll find this lesson especially intriguing.”
It’s her gentle way of reminding me to pay attention.
Which I pretend to do.
For about two minutes, until her back is turned again.
And then I start whispering to Sebastian again.
“I think I should tell someone if she doesn’t show up soon,” I say.
“Who? Like the headmistress?”
“Yeah.”
Under Ms. Applegate’s influence, Zelda Mackey puts the final touches on the sunflower she’s painting as part of the demonstration.
“I think so, too,” Sebastian murmurs. “If you want me to come with you, I will.”
I shake my head. “It’s okay. I can handle it.” I think.
I hear the announcement that afternoon, when I’m about halfway down the hall where the administrative offices are located—and where I’m hoping Headmistress Fothergill is sitting behind her desk, peering down through her cat glasses at some plans to update the curricula or increase tuition next year. I need to tell her about Kash—it’s been too long as it is.
“All students are to report to Harper Auditorium immediately for a special assembly. I repeat, all students are to report to Harper Auditorium.”
The corridor is already busy with girls at their lockers, swapping books for their next class, or heading to the cafeteria for lunch. The announcement adds another layer of chaos to the fray.
“Did you hear that?”
“What do you think this is about?”
I pause a second, equally puzzled. In almost four years at Brightling, I’ve never been called to a previously unscheduled assembly. Something’s wrong. My heartbeat quickens. What if this is about Kash—or Clio’s Scroll? What if they’re connected somehow?
While the other students begin to file in the direction of the auditorium, I force myself forward. Against the grain. Toward the headmistress’s office. Whatever’s happening in the auditorium will have to wait. Kash is my friend, and she needs me. And despite what she said last night, I do understand that. I have to help.
But the headmistress isn’t in her office. I spot her further down the hall, locking her door and rushing toward the auditorium like everyone else.
“Get to the auditorium, Ms. Harper,” she tells me when she notices I’m heading the wrong way. “You heard the announcement.”
“I have to talk to you, though—” I protest, turning to follow her even as she brushes me aside.
“Bianca, whatever it is, I’m sure it can wait until after the assembly,” she insists.
“But it can’t—this is important—”
“As is the assembly. I suggest you file into the auditorium and take a seat immediately so you don’t miss the announcement.”
I’ve never seen Headmistress Fothergill panic. Probably because she almost certainly passed Poise and Charm with the brightest of flying colors when she was a student at Brightling. Still, she moves at a pace that’s practically a run. I trail desperately behind her, trying to keep up. How she manages to walk so fast in high heels is beyond my comprehension.
“You don’t understand,” I insist. “I have to talk to you about Kassia Beckett—I think she’s missing.”
The headmistress stops so quickly I finally manage to reach her side. “What do you mean? Why do you think Kash is gone?”
Time is moving too quickly. I can’t get into details—it will take too long, and every moment counts.
“We had a fight,” I blurt out. “It was stupid—just a misunderstanding and some jealousy—but I haven’t heard from her since last night.”
Headmistress Fothergill’s plump, pink-lipsticked mouth puckers like she just ate a grapefruit. One of her eyebrows rises suspiciously, towering above the frame of her glasses. “Last night, you say?”
I nod. “I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings—”
She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault, Bianca. You did nothing wrong,” she says gently.
“But you don’t know what happened—”
She reaches out to brush my arm. “Just get to the auditorium. I’ll send someone to start looking for Kash immediately after. We can discuss this later. Can you do that? Is that all right?”
My breath comes out in a ragged sigh. “Okay.”
There’s an all-consuming feeling of tension inside the auditorium. Like the room has a pulse—and like that pulse is racing. I fidget in my seat, trying to ignore all the nervous gossip and shuffling around me. I search for Sebastian’s face in the crowd. I want to find him. Ask him if he knows what’s going on. Make sure he’s safe. But I don’t see him.
“I wonder if the Board finally proved the existence of two-headed dragons,” Aurelia Ketterling, sitting in the row ahead of me, speculates to no one in particular.
Melanie Bettencourt, crammed into the chair beside Aurelia, inches away ever so slightly. I don’t want to assume her retreat has to do with trying to get away from Aurelia, but I know deep down it does.
Before I can say anything to intervene in Aurelia’s defense, Headmistress Fothergill appears on the stage at the front of the auditorium. She raises her hand in the air—a summons for silence—and the murmuring slows … then stops.
“My dear ladies of Brightling Academy,” she says into the microphone at the podium. “It is with a heavy heart that I must deliver dire news to you. For millennia, Muses have carried on a sacred, precious duty: inspiring beauty and goodness into the hearts of our non-magical brethren. Together, Muse and Mundane have seamlessly coordinated to make our shared world a better, brighter place. Yet the time has come when our numbers are waning, and our efforts have less impact than they used to.”
Around me, there are startled gasps, confused glances, and dread-filled whispers. The other girls may not understand what’s happening, but I already do. The headmistress is talking about the Lost Scroll of Clio. She’s going to tell them about the prediction. And even though I’m not surprised by the news, my stomach clenches like it’s trapped in a vise.
“Clio, one of the original Nine and Muse of history, foresaw that a time like this would come—a time when the Well of Imagination runs dry,” the headmistress continues.
She proceeds to tell them about everything Sebastian and I have already managed to sort out—that the prediction is coming true, that it’s happening quickly, that we’re in danger. While she talks, I c
rane my neck, chewing on my nails, searching again for Sebastian. Where is he? He must be here somewhere. He needs to hear this. He needs to know that, for better or worse, we were right.
“We are now closer than ever to Clio’s final warning,” Headmistress Fothergill informs us. “So close, in fact, that the Board of Nine has instructed each of the Muse academies around the world to be on high alert. The streets are dangerous for Muse-kind at present. Until we are sure the threat has passed—regardless of the outcome—all students are hereby on a Board-mandated lockdown until safe passage back to each of your homes can be arranged.”
Crap. This is bad.
As disorder erupts across the auditorium, my palms begin to sweat. I twist in my seat, still looking for Sebastian. That’s when I notice the statues are gone. All nine original Muses, with their laurels and instruments. The platforms on which they once sat are now scattered with a white powdery substance. It’s dust—shards of clay, the material from which they were sculpted. As I realize what must have happened, the imaginary vise tightens around my stomach. It’s so snug I think for a moment I’ll vomit.
Someone shattered the statues.
Shattered them, then carried away the pieces.
That’s it—the seventh omen: they will smash the creations of our hands with their own.
12
My head is still spinning faster than a windmill in a storm as I stand outside the doors of the auditorium, watching the stream of girls pass by on their way up to their dormitories. There’s the expected array of reactions to the headmistress’s announcement. Crying about the uncertainty of Muse-kind’s future. Complaints about the injustice of being academy-bound for the foreseeable future. Bemoaning the plans beyond Brightling’s gates that will now go missed: birthday parties, dates, and concerts.
Mostly, though, there is panic—fear of the magic unravelling around us, terrified speculation about what might come next … and how it will arrive.
