I frown. “Cora’s dying.”
Zara’s bony hand flies to her lips. “Cora?” she repeats, struggling to focus on me.
“Cate,” Tess chides, knocking her shoulder into mine, “you shouldn’t be so blunt.”
“I’ve suffered worse.” Zara rocks faster. “You truly think you can get us out of here?”
“I’ve got to. You’re all sitting ducks if I don’t.” I explain wh I roat Inez means to do.
“I told you, didn’t I?” Zara slams her palms onto the arms of her chair with a sharp cracking sound. “I told you she’d stand back and let us all be killed if it suited her purposes!”
“Yes, well.” My eyes dart toward the door, hoping the nurse with the strawberry birthmark is so involved in her knitting that she won’t investigate the noise. “Unfortunately, you were right. I was hoping you’d help us spread the word to the other patients—especially the other witches. Will there be a chance to do that?”
“I can try.” Zara stares at the peephole. “They haven’t taken us out for our constitutionals because of the snow, but perhaps tomorrow—or while I’m in line to use the water closet. I don’t know who are witches and who aren’t, though. Not for certain. We don’t dare talk about magic here.”
Hopefully, Finn’s found the Harwood records at the Archives, then.
“That’s all right,” I say. “We’re going to get everyone out, witches or no. Don’t say it will be Wednesday. Just tell them we’ll pull the fire bell, and that will be the signal that we’re here and they should get ready to leave.”
Mei had come up with the idea for sounding the alarm this morning while we were pounding roses into a powder with a mortar and pestle. She was here once when a new patient got hold of a nurse’s matches and set her bed on fire.
“I can try, but half of them won’t remember. The laudanum plays strange tricks on the memory.” Zara lowers her voice to a husky whisper. “I’ve been here long enough to grow used to the dosage. I play at being more afflicted than I am, but I still have some of my wits about me. On bad days, it takes a damnable amount of willpower not to beg for more. Can’t blame the ones who do.”
“I’ve got a plan for that, too.” I’ve just finished explaining what Mei and I intend to do when Tess slumps backward onto the bed, eyelashes fluttering. Her head knocks into the cement wall.
“Tess? Tess!” I cry, gathering her limp weight into my arms.
“Shhh!” Zara warns, going to the door and peering out.
“Tess?” I give her a little shake. Of all times for her to have a vision. I’ve never seen one take hold of her so strongly.
Tess opens her eyes, staring at me groggily. Her breath catches. “Oh, Cate.” She pulls away from me, both hands pressed to her mouth as though she’s trying not to be sick. Closing her eyes, she takes several deep breaths. Her heart-shaped face—like Maura’s, like Mother’s—has gone pale.
Zara stands with her back to the door, blocking the peephole.
“Are you all right?” I ask, touching Tess’s knee.
Tess nods, but her gray eyes look haunted. “It will work. I saw it. Sister Sophia was driving a wagon full of girls. I recognized some of them from the uncooperative ward. It was near dawn, I think; the sky was pink, and they were driving down a long carriageway toward a strange house. It was pink, too, with turrets and a widow’s walk, and it was by the sea. I could hear the waves and the gulls; I could even smell the salt water. It was so peculiar.” She puts a hand to her temple, and now I feel the red haze of her headache flaring.
“I—I know that house. I’ve been there.” Zara’s voice comes out a rasp, and she clears her throat. “There was a network of scholars who sympathized with the Daughters of Persephone. They came under the Brothers’ suspicions often enough that they had need of safe houses. That was one of them.”
“Could you tell us where it is?” I ask.
A grin stretches ghoulishly across Zara’s thin face. “I can do better than that. If you’ve got anything to write on, I’ll draw you a map.”
Tess produces>Tehes ghou a folded piece of paper and a stub of a pencil and gives them to Zara, her hands shaking.
“Let me fix your headache,” I say, and she nods, leaning back against the wall, snuggling into her gray cloak. For a moment, the only sound in the room is the scratching of Zara’s pencil as she marks out the map.
After Cora and my work in the infirmary, healing Tess’s headache is nothing. I only feel a moment’s dizziness. I’m more worried about her. She gives a little sigh when her headache disappears, but her face is still pinched with worry. If she saw our success, why is she so upset? The existence of a possible safe house is a boon; we can only hide a few girls in the convent, and I’ve been fretting about what will happen to the others after they leave Harwood.
Thank the Lord her vision came upon her now and not fifteen minutes ago. We would have been in the middle of the uncooperative ward, with dozens of witnesses. She’s in no state to cast spells, and my mind-magic alone wouldn’t have been enough.
Bringing her here was mad.
“Here.” Zara hands us the map. Her pupils are normal now; the shock seems to have focused her. “It’s a full night’s drive, but it’s the closest of the three safe houses we had. A married couple ran the place—John and Helen Grayson. And there was a password. It may have changed, but it used to be corruptio optimi pessima.”
“The corruption of the best is the worst,” Tess translates.
Zara nods. She’s gazing at Tess with fascination, as though she’s an angel come to earth. “You—you’re the oracle.” She ducks her head and gives a shy little laugh. “I—oh, I’ve so many questions for you. I hoped that someday—I’ve never spoken with an oracle who wasn’t touched by madness.”
Tess bites her lip. “Were they all mad?”
“Brenna, and Thomasina before her. I don’t know how Marcela might have turned out; she only lived to twenty-five.” Tess flinches, and Zara puts out a hand toward her. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to frighten—”
“No. I want to know everything. That’s why I came.” Tess tucks her feet under her on the bed, then smooths her pink skirts around her. “Your book was very helpful. I read it twice, when the visions first began. It made me feel less alone,” she confides, and Zara’s smile could melt the snow on the hillside.
Tess needs more mothering—more guidance—than I can provide.
“I know the Sisterhood has been awful to you, Zara,” I begin, haltingly, my hands knotted together in my lap. “I would understand if you wanted to go to one of the safe houses or somewhere else entirely. But I would like it very much if you’d come back to the convent with us. You’d be a great help to Tess—and to me.”
Next to me, Tess is perfectly still, as though she’s holding her breath.
Zara looks at me for a long moment, her dark eyes searching. Then her hand goes to the gold locket at her throat. “You’re Anna’s girls. If you can get me out of here, I’ll come.”
Tess bursts into tears and hurls herself at Zara.
“Thank you,” I say fervently.
Zara opens her arms. “Thank you,” she says, in a voice choked with emotion. I think of how easily Tess expresses her affection—the way we hug and swat and pinch, braid each other’s hair and tie each other’s sashes—and I wonder how long it’s been since Zara’s had that, the simple comfort of human touch.
Zara smiles at me over Tess’s shoulder. “You’re strong girls. Clever. I wish Anna were here to see it. She would be proud.”
“Would she?” I stare at the ugly cement wall. “Sometimes I think she’d want us as far away from all this as we could get. Mother hated. M be pr her magic.”
Zara shakes her head as Tess settles back next to me on the scratchy brown blanket. “Not always. Not when we were girls. We loved being witches then. But Anna used her magic in a way she regretted, and it soured her. She came to think of her gift as poison.”
I clench my hands tig
hter to hide their trembling. Here, finally, may be my chance for answers. “What did the Sisters make her do?”
Zara hesitates, glancing out the window. There’s nothing to see but gray sky and white snow and the farmer’s red silo over the hill. “This was your mother’s secret to tell, not mine.”
“But she didn’t tell it,” I say, tapping my boot impatiently. “There’s so much she never told us. I can’t forget the way she looked at me when she realized I could do mind-magic. She was horrified.”
Zara leans forward, patched elbows propped on sharp knees, like a puppet all made of right angles. “Not at you, Cate. She was ashamed of herself. The magic that broke your mother’s heart wasn’t something the Sisters made her do. It was something she chose.”
Tess and I shift closer to each other on the bed.
“You should know that she loved your father very much,” Zara begins. “I remember when they met—Brendan was just a poor classics student, but Anna didn’t care. She was so happy. So eager to become a wife and mother and leave the convent behind. She was always a bit of a romantic.”
I nod. I remember the way my parents laughed together, the way they walked through the gardens hand in hand when Mother was well enough. Before she died, Father could be downright merry.
“She never told him about the magic, though.” It seems such a large omission. Too big a lie for a marriage to survive.
“That,” Zara says, “is where you are wrong.”
But Father doesn’t know about our magic. He’s never once indicated—and Mother’s instructions were very clear: we were to keep the magic a secret from everyone, including Father. If he knew about her magic—
My faith in him is shaky at best, but he never would have betrayed her.
Which means she—
Tess arrives at the same conclusion, a second before me. She jumps to her feet. “She erased his memory, didn’t she?”
Outrage floods through me. Why deprive us of a father who could protect us, who would know what we are and love us anyway?
“For his own safety, and for yours,” Zara says softly. “He would have done anything for Anna. When I came under suspicion, she was worried she would be next—and that if she were arrested, Brendan would do something desperate to protect her. Then both of your parents would have been gone.”
“They might as well be,” I mutter. Father’s always away on business, and even when he’s home, he’s not present in any way that matters.
“No. If you’d been orphaned, the Sisters would have taken you in, even if your powers hadn’t manifested yet. Because of the prophecy, they might have separated you. That wasn’t what your mother wanted. She wanted you to have a normal childhood, together, no matter what your destiny.”
Destiny. The word sounds so grand, and yet it promises such a horrible fate. One of us will not live to see the twentieth century. One of us will murder another.
“She came to regret it—keeping your father from knowing you. From knowing her. Once she erased Brendan’s memory, she had to keep up the pretense. She was afraid of what it would mean to him if he found out.”
Oh, Lord. Ever since I became a witch, I’ve resented him, thought of him as someone to fool and scorn, instead of someone who would love and protect us. It’s difficult to accept; I’o asincm so accustomed to thinking of him as weak.
“I knew it,” Tess cries, pearly teeth bared. “He has his faults, Lord knows—I share most of them. But Mother’s reasons never made sense to me.”
Tess was only nine when Mother died and Father’s business trips began to get longer and longer. She used to mope when he left, fretting that he would be in a carriage accident, or robbed by highwaymen, or come down with influenza in the city with no one to look after him. She has always depended on him—wanted to depend on him—far more than Maura or me.
I stare at the scuffed wooden floor. It feels like treachery even to think it, much less say it, but I have to. For Tess. “I loved Mother, but I think she was wrong in this.”
Tess nods. “Father said he’ll come to New London for Christmas, to celebrate the feast with us. I want to tell him the truth. I insist.”
I look at Tess: her pointy chin set, her hands in loose fists by her sides, her entire stance prepared for an argument. She is not the sort to insist on much. She wants peace and quiet and libraries full of books, and the right to read them.
I stand up. “All right, then.”
“He deserves to know us. We deserve for him to know us, and—wait. Did you agree with me?” She throws her arms around me, bumping her head right into my chin. “Really? You won’t fight me on it?”
I extricate myself, massaging my chin. “Really, truly. I’ll even help you tell him.”
“Thank you. Oh, you’re the very best sister.” Tess hesitates, bouncing back onto the narrow bed. “Do you think he’ll be very hurt that we’ve kept it a secret so long?”
I love that Tess does not doubt Father for a second. She has perfect faith in his ability to accept three witchy daughters; she’s worried only for his feelings, not her own.
I tuck a strand of hair back up into
my simple chignon. “I don’t know. I hope he’ll understand that we were following Mother’s wishes. I wonder that she didn’t tell him the truth when she knew she was dying.”
The truth is, Mother kept loads of secrets. If Zara hadn’t written me, who knows whether I would have ever looked for her diary. We could have been utterly oblivious to the prophecy, pawns in the Sisterhood’s manipulations.
“She was wrong to do it, but she did it because she wanted to keep us safe. That should count for something. She wasn’t perfect, but she loved us, Cate.”
“She did her best,” I admit. As will I. I promised her I’d look after Maura and Tess, and perhaps they’re not children anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop wanting to keep them safe and happy. “Will you do me a favor in return, Tess? Will you stay here with Zara while I go take care of a few things?”
Zara’s gone quiet, staring dreamily out the window. She comes back to herself now, touching the locket again. “Where are you going?”
“Tess isn’t the only oracle we know. I mean to pay the other one a visit, and see whether she can tell me anything useful.”
arm am">To th
CHAPTER
17
HEART HAMMERING, I SCURRY UP TO the south wing of the third floor, where Paul’s floor plans showed isolation—maximum security. There’s a nurse sitting on a stool just inside the door, a thickset woman with gray curls and a double chin, reading Scriptures by light of a candle.
“What are you doing, Sister?” she asks. “No one’s to be in here.”
I gather my magic and arrow in on the blue shadows beneath her eyes, the droop of her shoulders. Sleep, I compel her. You’re exhausted. Forget you saw me.
In a moment, her head is propped against the plaster wall, her soft snores filling the empty hallway, her book open on her ample bosom.
I find that I am not overly troubled by performing mind-magic on her. Zara’s confession about Mother has lightened my conscience considerably. We’ve all got to do what we think best, when it comes down to it, and hope that those who love us won’t judge us too harshly.
I pick up the nurse’s candle and head down the hall, wet boots squeaking against the tile floor. The other wings are grim and depressing places, but this one is positively desolate. There are no windows and only two gas lamps, one at each end of the corridor. Two buckets squat in the middle of the hall, catching water from a leak in the roof.
I hear faint scuffling inside one room and peer in the narrow window. There’s a girl pacing back and forth, her white blouse stark in the darkness. She runs to the door when she sees the light, and I recognize the wild features and blond hair of the tiny girl who tried to refuse her tea last week. She hisses, scratching at the door like a cat. The sound is strangely muted; I wonder why until I glimpse the walls, which look to be made of clot
h. The girl yowls, and I back away hastily.
Brenna ought to be very nearby.
I squint into the next cell—empty. Across the hall, though, there is a name tag. Neat handwriting spells out B. Elliott. I suppose, unlike the other patients rotated in and out depending on their behavior, Brenna has taken up permanent residence in this isolated place.
I squint through the tiny window beneath Brenna’s name. It’s hard to see in the darkness, but I finally glimpse a figure hunched in the corner. The small room seems empty except for a mattress and a few blankets lying tangled on the floor. Even the window’s been bricked over and covered in that pale cloth.
Agito, I think, and the pins of the lock slide open.
Brenna jumps at the sound. I tense, readying a silencing spell. But when I push open the door and slip inside, my candle casting wavering shadows, Brenna just stares at me with her eerie blue eyes.
“Brenna, it’s me. It’s Cate Cahill, come to visit you.”
“You look like one of the crows,” Brenna says, pressing back against the soft wall. Her white blouse is buttoned crooked, and her coarse-looking brown skirt pools around her bare feet. “Did they send you to break me again?”
“No. No, that was—” How do I tell her that ruining her mind was an accident? “I’m so sorry you’re broken, Brenna. I wish I could help.”
“You can’t. No one can. They’re going to kill me.” Brenna keens softly, rocking back and forth behind her knotted chestnut hair. “It’s a very strange thing, knowing your own fate, Cate. Oh. Fate. Cate. That rhymes.” She giggles.
“Er, yes.” I’m whispering, though no one can possibly hear us. “Do you—Brenna, everything you see, does it all come true? Always?”
Brenna nods. “Oh, yes. I don’t make it happen. You understand that.” She rushes at me, grasping at my cloak. She’s gotten even thinner in the month since she came here. She looks half starved, and there is a bruise shadowing one of her cheeks. “You do understand, don’t you? Please. I tried. I tried with Jack, and with Grandfather, but no one believes me. They never listen.”
Star Cursed: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book Two Page 25
