My twin laughed at her reflection and then turned to me. “It’s funny. Sometimes, when we do this, I think there are four of us.”
I saw that Penny was smirking. She turned and whispered something to Nadia, although I noticed Nadia didn’t reply.
“What are you looking at?” Scarlet snapped at her.
“You’re going to need your reflections for friends at this rate,” Penny said. “Because you won’t have any others left.”
I think Scarlet would have thumped her, were it not for the fact that Madame Zelda swept past at that exact second. That meant I got a chance to say something, though I kept my voice low. “What do you mean?”
“Flitworth has a new friend. Maybe she won’t need you any more.”
Scarlet glared at her. “You’re not exactly doing brilliantly in the friendship stakes yourself, Penny, are you?”
Penny shrugged, put her leg up on the barre and stretched it out. “I’ve decided I no longer care. I like myself. I don’t need to bother with the rest of you.”
Scarlet made a disgruntled sound and then, to my amazement, carried on warming up. She didn’t say another word to Penny.
And well, for Penny, it was a fairly mild comment. She had certainly eased up on her bullying. Normally Scarlet would have jumped at the chance to fight back over the smallest insult, whether the teachers were watching or not.
But then I realised why, because as I watched Scarlet’s eyes in the mirror, I saw a reflection of myself. Penny’s comments had touched a nerve. We were worried about Ariadne.
Penny leant over again, after a quick glance to check that Madame Zelda was nowhere nearby. “You ought to keep an eye on Ariadne,” she said quietly, just to me. Her tone of voice had completely changed. Become more serious.
“Why?” I whispered back.
“She’s got herself on the wrong side of a venomous snake. Trust me, it takes one to know one.” Penny straightened and stretched her arms up to the stone ceiling. Her voice stayed quiet, and with the girls all around us and the flickering gas lamps, it almost seemed unreal, as if I wasn’t really hearing her. “She’s going to get hurt. And the Wonder Twins won’t be able to save her this time.”
Penny turned away and her words melted from my ears, but they played on over and over in my mind.
Chapter Twenty-five
SCARLET
aturday came and flew by and soon I saw the sun begin to set on the horizon. That meant there were only a few more hours before we met with Ebony to find out what her next move would be.
We were sitting at dinner with Ariadne. Muriel wasn’t present this time, since she’d gone to get her bandages taken off.
“She’s feeling much better now,” Ariadne said happily.
“I think she’s still not quite right,” I said. “She forgot my name again the other day.” Muriel still seemed a little zombie-like to me, though she came to life more when Ariadne was around.
Ariadne shrugged and took a cautious bite of broccoli. “I think she’s doing jolly well. No thanks to you-know-who. But, you know, I don’t think she’s done anything to us! Perhaps we’re off the hook,” she said hopefully.
I frowned. I had seen Ebony that morning in the corridor, holding her cat in her arms and glaring in Muriel’s direction. She didn’t look like someone who had let them off the hook.
And what about all the trouble that Ariadne was getting into? She’d been given a detention that day. Me, I’d been given a gold star for getting all my spellings right. And Miss Finch had said I’d done “excellent work” in ballet. Ariadne, on the other hand, had apparently spent her entire hockey lesson chasing the ball and not once getting it, only to finish off by whacking it up into a tree, where it balanced for a few seconds before falling on to a first year’s head.
“Has Muriel been getting into trouble in class?” I blurted out, which must have seemed to come from nowhere.
Ivy looked up and blinked at me, but Ariadne didn’t seem fazed by it. “A little,” she admitted, poking the broccoli round her plate. “Just here and there. She forgets things.” She punctuated her sentence with a yawn.
It was strange. Both Muriel and Ariadne seemed exhausted. Muriel had had a head injury, I suppose, but Ariadne hadn’t. Yet this … whatever this might be … was happening to both of them. Both of whom were now enemies of Ebony McCloud.
But there wasn’t time to ponder further. At that moment, a rumble shook the dining hall and everyone gasped. Moments later, a flash of white lightning splashed against the windows, lighting up the world. The conversation surged.
“Thunderstorm!” I said, my eyes going wide. “Nearby!”
“Calm down, girls,” I heard one of the teachers call out from the other end of the hall. “It’s just a storm.”
I turned and looked around. The hall was filled with faces, some excited, some afraid. Outside there were grey clouds boiling and that strange electrical crackle in the air.
There was another crash and girls screamed, but one face stood out.
Ebony stood and her face lit up white, the storm clouds dancing in her eyes as she stared out of the windows. The rain began to pour. And Ebony laughed and laughed.
When everyone had finished dinner, we were ordered to return to our rooms and absolutely not to go outside for any reason. Well, they didn’t have to tell me twice. The storm was so close that the windows were rattling in their frames.
I couldn’t shake Ebony’s laughter from my mind. As we headed for our room, the corridors ran with girls streaming for the safety of their beds. But while I could hear plenty of people muttering about the storm, just as many were saying the word “witch”.
Everyone had seen her. Her reputation was spreading. But she couldn’t create storm clouds, could she?
It had set my teeth on edge and raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
You need to stay away from her, I told myself.
But since when had Scarlet Grey ever shied away from trouble? No, we were going to her room after lights-out and that was that.
Ivy didn’t exactly agree.
“I think we’ve done enough,” she said as we got to our room. She rubbed her arms where her skin had risen into goosebumps. It had been warm earlier in the day, but the rain had brought a chill with it. “All we’ve done by watching her is scared ourselves silly. We’re still no closer to finding out what she’s really up to. Or if she’s really a wi—”
There was a BANG and our window flew open, sending a gust of rain spilling into our room. I ran over and leant out, stretching for the handle with the rain splashing against my sleeve. I could see the trees swaying in the breeze and the ground far below me, and tried to push back the memories of the time when I’d been held over the rooftops, nearly to fall to my death.
“Scarlet!” Ivy gasped behind me.
Finally my fingertips grasped the metal handle and I tugged on it, pulling the window shut again.
I looked back at my twin, breathless.
She didn’t have any words for a moment. “It’s just weather,” she said eventually.
I nodded, but the timing of it had shocked me. My heart was still beating a little too fast.
“We should go,” I said as I remembered what we’d been talking about. Even as I said it, part of me was protesting. Deep down, I just wanted to climb under my warm covers and sleep until the storm faded. But I couldn’t do that. “I think we might just have to face the possibility that she’s put some sort of curse on Ariadne and Muriel.”
Ivy sighed at me and went to sit down on her bed – although she immediately got up again, after discovering it had been rained on. “There’s no such thing as curses, Scarlet! But maybe Ebony’s doing something.”
“Like what?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest.
“Perhaps …” Ivy stared at the floor. “Perhaps she’s somehow persuaded the teachers to tell them off all the time. They don’t tell her off, do they?”
“Hmm.” That was a good point.
“She’s definitely doing something, that’s for sure. I think we need to go and meet her and try to get to the bottom of it. We can’t be out of the loop for this. And if we ditch Ebony now, we could be her next targets.”
Ivy looked out of the window, where the glass was being battered by the rain. The room was filled with the smell of wet and cold from outside. “But what about Ariadne …” she started.
I filled in the gap in her sentence. “Ariadne will be fine. She knows we’re going to investigate Ebony.”
Without her, my brain added.
And she’s not happy about it.
My muscles twitched as I tried to fling the thought away.
“She knows,” I repeated.
Ivy didn’t meet my eyes.
We were curled up with our heads on our (still slightly damp) pillows when Matron came along to check we had our lights out. I could have sworn I heard her muttering something about “blooming cats” out in the corridor as she pulled our door closed.
We waited what I hoped was long enough for her to have made it to every room. I sneaked up to our door and peered out, only to see Matron heading back into her apartment and locking the door behind her.
Ivy’s eyes appeared from underneath her covers.
“Coast is clear,” I whispered. “But we should give it a minute.” We needed to make sure Matron was asleep and not about to go on patrol any time soon. We couldn’t risk getting caught again.
The sun had set, but the rain was still pounding on the windows. The thunder had eased off, now only the occasional distant rumble.
Ivy and I slipped out of room thirteen and headed down the corridor towards Ebony’s room, where we found Agatha waiting, bouncing on her tiptoes. Down the hall I could see some of the other doors creaking open and girls peeking out. “You have to knock three times,” she whispered.
With a quick glance at Ivy, I reached out and rapped on the door three times as gently as I could.
The door swung open, but there was nobody behind it.
I blinked into the darkness and then my eyes adjusted. Ebony was sitting at the back of the room, her black hair hanging down over her face as she focused on something on the floor in front of her. It was fairly dark, but there was a moon outside casting the walls with a bluish glow.
“How did she open the door?” Ivy hissed, but Agatha just gave her an impatient look – and I knew straight away that she believed it was magic.
I grabbed my twin’s hand and pulled her into the room. From the looks of it, we were to be the audience. So I sat down on the carpet and others began to follow, forming a circle. I tried to peer more closely at what Ebony had laid out before her. It appeared to be a series of cards with pictures on them, but I couldn’t quite make out what they were. I wondered if they were the same as those she had used in her classroom trick.
“Where’s your roommate?” I asked Ebony, looking at the empty bed, the one with the teddy bear perching on it. But she completely ignored me, not even looking up. I rolled my eyes at Ivy.
Soon we were all inside – Ivy and I and Ebony’s hangers-on.
“Welcome, sisters,” Ebony said. “Are you ready to face your fortunes?” She leant forward and lit a candle, illuminating the cards.
They all had strange paintings on them, with names in bold type underneath like:
THE EMPRESS
THE MAGICIAN
THE MOON
It sparked a flicker of recognition in my memory. Tarot. I thought I’d seen a set at our Aunt Phoebe’s house once. I think she’d thought they were for playing poker.
Ebony swept them all up in her hands with her long fingers. “It’s time to deal the cards of fate. Who will go first?” she asked.
“Me,” I said suddenly. I said it so fast that I wasn’t sure if the words had even come from my mouth. Ivy looked at me in horror.
Ebony held out her hand and gestured for me to move in front of her. I got to my feet and walked at a snail’s pace to the middle of the circle while I wondered what I was letting myself in for.
I sat down in front of her and she began to shuffle the cards. Then, very quickly, she dealt them before me in some sort of order. She reached out and tapped her nail on the card nearest to me. “The Present. Turn it over.”
I did as she said.
THE TWINS
I laughed. Obviously! Ebony looked up at me sharply, shocking me into silence.
She stared into the card. “The Twins. Perhaps someone new will come into your life. Or someone old.” She tipped her head to one side. “Or … you may have to choose between two paths.”
Agatha raised her hand. “It can also mean that someone is being two-faced!”
“Shut up, Agatha,” another girl said, whacking her on the arm.
“Another,” said Ebony, tapping her finger on the next card. “The Future.”
I turned over the next.
DEATH
Everyone gasped. The grim reaper on the card grinned up at me ghoulishly.
“Actually,” said Ebony quietly, “Death merely signifies an ending of—”
She was interrupted by a frantic rapping at the door.
Everyone went silent. I gripped the threadbare carpet beneath my hands. Was it a teacher? Someone else? Something else?
Ebony wasted no time. She jumped up, put a finger to her lips and went to open the door. (I noticed that this time, she didn’t use any sort of magic trick to do so.)
She gently touched the door handle and twisted it.
Only for it to swing open, and reveal …
Ariadne.
Chapter Twenty-six
IVY
riadne stood in Ebony’s doorway. She was holding the cat.
For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t be able to see us, but then I remembered the candle.
“Oh,” Ariadne said. Her eyes passed over us all, and met mine. They flashed with hurt and I felt a sudden panic in my heart. “I … I brought your cat, Ebony.”
She held out Midnight, who climbed into his mistress’s arms and stood up on her shoulders, before curling round her neck.
“Where was he?” Ebony asked. I noticed her voice became much softer, more loving. She obviously did care a lot about the cat.
Ariadne seemed to choke on her words. Her eyes didn’t leave mine, but I could see the battle in her mind. She’d known our plan was to infiltrate Ebony’s gang and if she spoke out now, everything could come tumbling down. “H-he was scratching at our door and then when we opened it, he kept climbing on Muriel’s bed and he wouldn’t leave, and I … I just thought …” She took a deep breath. “I’m going back to bed,” she finished.
Before I could say anything, she had turned on her heel and dashed away down the corridor.
A smile twitched on Ebony’s face, and I realised then that she must have thought Ariadne was afraid of her. Which I suppose she was, but I was certain that wasn’t the reason she was acting so strangely.
No. It was because we’d betrayed her.
After that, Ebony ignored Scarlet and began telling other people’s fortunes. But my mind was swimming – or more like drowning, it felt like.
What had we done?
We’d lied to Ariadne. Well, we’d omitted the truth, but that felt just as bad. From her point of view, we’d told her nothing was going on, while at the same time secretly fraternising with this girl who had been terrorising the school and had probably injured her friend. The hurt on her face was more than I could bear.
I almost didn’t notice when Ebony apparently grew tired of reading tarot cards and began putting them away. She’d only done a few people, but she’d seemed unsettled from the start. I did notice that Mary in particular looked relieved not to have been included this time round.
We all left and crept back to our rooms and into our beds. Scarlet and I didn’t say a word to each other.
I think both of us were afraid. We’d been caught out, and now we would have to face the consequences.
After a
night fraught with worry, I finally woke early on Sunday morning and the sun seemed to shine a new light on things.
We’ll talk to Ariadne. She’s Ariadne. She’s our best friend. Everything will be fine.
A quick glance at the clock told me it was about six and nobody else was awake – the morning bell had not yet rung. Scarlet was still fast asleep in the opposite bed, her head buried under her pillow. But I was too wide awake to go back to bed, so I decided to beat the morning rush and head for the bathrooms.
But what happened on the way changed everything.
As I was walking there, I was taking my time, enjoying the quiet hallways. The rooks were cawing from the trees outside and the sun was shining brightly. I went past the staircase to the mostly abandoned third floor – and that was when I heard it.
Voices.
Someone was up there. I paused, listened. No, two people.
They were talking so quietly that I could barely make out any words, but I was suddenly intrigued. It was rare for anyone to be up on the third floor, let alone at six in the morning.
I began to creep up the steps, craning my neck to see if I could identify whoever was talking. As I neared the top, I caught a momentary glance of two girls.
One had black hair and black boots. The other was tall and blonde.
Ebony and Muriel!
I tried to hide my sharp intake of breath as I ducked down on to the stairs. I prayed they hadn’t seen me.
Ebony and Muriel? What were they talking about and why were they talking to one another?
It certainly hadn’t looked as though Ebony was threatening Muriel. It looked like they were having a secretive chat. I could still hear the faint murmurs of from the bottom of the stairs.
My heart was pounding in my chest. I climbed up from the steps and hurried back down the corridor. It was really strange. I had to tell Scarlet.
I shook my twin awake, to which she responded by groaning at me angrily.
“What? What do you want? It’s too early!”
“You won’t believe what I just saw!” I said.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “It had better be the Holy Grail if it’s worth waking me up for.”
The Curse in the Candlelight Page 14
