The Curse in the Candlelight

by Sophie Cleverly

  I went over and perched on the windowsill. “Well, it’s not, but it’s certainly interesting. I just saw Muriel talking to Ebony.”

  Scarlet yawned. “What are they doing up at this hour? Were they arguing? Or was Ebony bullying her again?”

  I shuffled on the cold sill. “Nothing of the sort. They had their heads bowed together and they were having some sort of quiet discussion. But I couldn’t really make out anything they were saying, not without going up there.”

  That got her attention. She sat up straight in bed. “Hang on. Are you saying that they might have been plotting something? Together?”

  I nodded this time, feeling the cogs whirr in my mind. There was no sort of confrontation that I could see and they must have planned to meet up that early. How long had they been doing this, out of sight of everyone else? Maybe their conflict was not what it seemed.

  “Or maybe,” Scarlet said, peeling off her covers and swinging her legs out, “maybe Ebony is controlling Muriel in some way.” Now I could see my twin’s mind working like my own. “I mean with everything Ebony has done … Doesn’t it seem like she could have the power to do that? She doesn’t get in trouble with the teachers. She cursed Muriel. Ariadne spends time with Muriel and suddenly Ariadne’s the one getting into all the trouble. I think Ebony’s pulling the strings here.”

  “Hmm,” I said. I wasn’t so sure. But there was one thing I was certain of. “Whatever is going on, we need to talk to Ariadne. As soon as possible.”

  Scarlet nodded her agreement. “Let’s just hope she wants to talk to us.”

  We hurried to Ariadne’s room and knocked gently on the door. I hoped that Muriel was still occupied elsewhere.

  A few moments later, Ariadne came to answer. She was yawning and her mousy hair was sticking up at odd angles where it had recently been pressed into the pillow.

  “Oh. Morning,” she said when she saw us. It sounded like a normal greeting, but the way she said it was heavy with hidden meaning.

  “Look, we’re really sorry,” Scarlet said, beating me to it. “We need to come and explain. Is Muriel there?”

  Ariadne looked back into her room. “No,” she said, puzzled. “Her bed’s empty. She must have gone to the lavatories or something.”

  I gave my twin a quick glance, but said nothing. That explanation would wait.

  “Quick, let us in,” Scarlet said and Ariadne stood aside wordlessly. We both filed into the room, the door shutting behind us.

  Scarlet looked back at me and then took a deep breath. “Look, again, we’re really sorry. We’re idiots. We should have told you that we were going to Ebony’s room.”

  “Have you been going about with her this whole time?” Ariadne asked in a small voice.

  “Yes,” Scarlet said. “Well, no. Only since we said we were going to infiltrate her. But then we didn’t talk to you about it.”

  “Because we knew you were unhappy at the idea,” I said. “And we thought it would upset you.” Even as I said the words, I felt awful about them. How could we have been so foolish?

  “You should have said!” Ariadne protested. She flattened the back of her hair with an anxious hand. “That’s what friends are for. And what if she had done something to you? I’d never have forgiven myself!”

  “We’re fine,” Scarlet insisted. “She did some spooky tricks, that’s all. No curses. She thinks we’re on her side.”

  “And are you?” Ariadne asked.

  I froze for a moment, shocked by the question. “No!” I said, but the pause might have been a little too long.

  We had been drawn into Ebony’s world and I had to admit that we found her interesting. But we weren’t on her side. We wouldn’t support her hurting anyone.

  “Of course we’re not. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of what she’s doing,” Scarlet explained. “And she hasn’t tried to hurt anyone so far. At least, not in front of us.”

  “But now we’ve hurt your feelings,” I said.

  Ariadne’s lower lip quivered. “It’s not only about my feelings. What about Muriel? You know what Ebony did to her.”

  “Do we?” Scarlet asked. “We don’t even know for sure what happened.”

  I glanced back at the door, concerned that Muriel was about to return at any moment. I had to explain what I’d witnessed that morning. “There’s something else we came to tell you. I just saw …” My words trailed off, like they’d flown from my mouth. I didn’t know how to say it. Was I just about to make Ariadne even more upset?

  But Scarlet had no concerns about picking up my sentence. “She saw Muriel talking to Ebony in secret. On the third floor.”

  Ariadne’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “What? Are you sure?”

  I winced. “Certain.”

  “What if Ebony was picking on her?” Ariadne’s expression became a little frantic. “Should I go and help?”

  Scarlet looked at me. “I was concerned that Ebony might be controlling her in some way. But Ivy says it looked friendly.”

  “Um, yes, it did,” I said. “They looked like they were … plotting something, honestly.”

  Now Ariadne frowned. “That’s not possible. Ebony’s been ghastly to her. Ebony attacked her! There’s no way she would be talking to Ebony of her own volition.”

  “I just think …” I stared at the floor. I knew this would be hard for Ariadne. “There may be more to this than we’re seeing. What if they’re both up to something?”

  Ariadne folded her arms and there was a look in her eyes that I didn’t recognise at all. It almost frightened me. “Why would they be? It just doesn’t make sense. They’d never even met before the start of term. And Ebony’s done nothing but be cruel to her.”

  “I know, but it’s what I saw. Don’t you believe me?” I was almost pleading with her now. Could this get any worse?

  My best friend bit her lip. “I … I don’t know.”

  Scarlet’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t believe Ivy? How could you say that! Why would she lie?” She moved closer to me, linked her arm through mine.

  There was a flicker of something on Ariadne’s face.

  And then it got worse.

  “Maybe you’re jealous,” she said.

  “I … what?” I gasped.

  “Maybe you’re jealous,” she repeated, staring at the floor. “Perhaps you should just leave.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  SCARLET

  er words hit me like a punch to the stomach. They seemed to come almost from nowhere.

  I thought for a moment that I must have heard her wrongly. That my ears were lying to me. Ariadne had never been angry with us before. Never!

  Neither Ivy nor I said anything. We just stood there and gaped at her.

  “Muriel hasn’t done anything wrong!” she squeaked. “It’s all Ebony! Can’t you see?”

  “We know Ebony’s up to something,” Ivy protested. “But I’m just saying that we think there’s more to this than meets the eye. Especially now that we’ve seen Muriel talking to her and—”

  Once the shock had worn off, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. I unlinked my arms from Ivy’s and spread them out wide. “We’re not jealous! Why would we be jealous?”

  “Because I’m friends with Muriel now,” Ariadne said, “and you don’t like it! Maybe you’ve picked a side!”

  “Nonsense,” I snapped. It was nonsense. I didn’t care a jot who Ariadne was friends with, as long as she was still friends with us. But suddenly our friendship seemed to be rapidly disappearing down the plughole.

  “I’m not just your sidekick!” Ariadne squeaked again. “I don’t always have to follow you both around. I can make my own friends. I was so afraid of her before, but I’ve worked hard at getting her trust and now we get along fine. You should be supporting me, not trying to undermine everything!”

  “We’re not trying to—” Ivy started, but she was cut off by the bedroom door swinging open.

  It was Muriel. “Oh, hello,�
� she said pleasantly, unaware of what she’d just interrupted. “You’re all up early.”

  “As are you,” I said, with perhaps a bit of a sneer. “Where have you been?”

  “Just to the lavatories,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows in a way that I hoped expressed the word Aha! But Ariadne was no longer looking at me.

  I felt the anger bubbling away in my stomach. This wasn’t fair. Maybe we should have told her about everything with Ebony, but we weren’t lying about Ebony talking to Muriel. Why didn’t she believe us? Ariadne was supposed to be our best friend. “Come on, Ivy,” I said quietly. We had to leave before my anger boiled over. “Let’s go.”

  At breakfast I gulped down my porridge and I think Ivy did hers too. We weren’t keen to have another confrontation with Ariadne. There were tears in my twin’s eyes.

  I couldn’t stop my mind from fizzing with fury. It wasn’t really directed at Ariadne, though I did think she was being unfair. She was still our best friend, no matter what. No, it was Ebony and Muriel I was furious with. Now that Muriel had lied about where she had been, I felt certain that she was up to something. And whatever it was – they shouldn’t have got in the way of our friendship with Ariadne.

  Ivy and I headed for the library, hoping it was somewhere we could cool off.

  “Morning, girls,” Miss Jones said as we walked in. “I’m only here for a couple of hours and then Jing is taking over.” Jing smiled at her.

  “Morning,” Ivy said, but I could see that her heart wasn’t in it.

  “No books for us today, Miss,” I said, unable to keep the glower off my face. “Serious business.”

  Miss Jones just looked a little puzzled, shrugged and walked away. Jing, on the other hand, leant forward over the desk.

  “Is this about the witch girl?” she whispered.

  That was unexpected. I moved in closer. “What do you know?” I asked. “We’re investigating.”

  Jing didn’t seem to find that odd. “I saw you with her. I see a lot of things, in fact. People don’t tend to notice me.” She looked over her shoulder to check no one was eavesdropping. “She’s in here a lot with those spell books. I don’t know where she gets them from. They’re certainly not in our collection.”

  “Have you seen her with Muriel too?” Ivy asked. “The very tall girl with the blonde curls?”

  Jing nodded. “A few times. Always hiding away in the corner, talking to each other. Just yesterday, in fact, I saw one of them go into the stacks, then later the other. Over there.” She pointed far in the distance, over to one of the oldest sections of the library, one that hadn’t been destroyed by the fire.

  I looked at Ivy. Things were getting weirder and weirder. “Hmm. Maybe they’re leaving notes?”

  “Could be.” Ivy turned to Jing. “Thank you!”

  She smiled and leant back, picking up a pile of returned books. “Sundays in the library are not very exciting. I have to do something!”

  I grinned at her. Suddenly we had a lead. The chase was on!

  We hurried over to the corner where she had pointed. It was in the history section where two bookcases met, along with a third that ran alongside and hid anyone standing there from sight to the rest of the library. The shelves were heavy with thick books.

  “If you were Ebony,” I said, “where would you leave a secret note for Muriel?”

  Ivy paused to think. “Maybe up high, since Muriel’s tall.”

  We began searching the higher shelves, looking at books that I had spent most of my time at school trying to ignore. Books with titles like Beaumont’s History of Britain and The Battle of Hastings and Stories from the Americas. Rookwood had been collecting books for longer than it had been collecting students.

  I flipped through several and turned them upside down, feeling glad that Miss Jones couldn’t see me. But then a title caught my eye.

  The Salem Witch Trials: A History.

  “Ivy, look! This has to be it!” I snatched the book off the shelf.

  The book was black and heavy, with gold titling that glinted in the light. I held it out and rifled through the pages, until something gave a soft rustle and floated gently to the floor.

  Ivy snatched it up and we both took a look at it. It was definitely a note, written in block capitals.

  MEET TOMORROW 6 O’CLOCK

  USUAL PLACE

  BE THERE

  There were no further details, no names. But a secret note, left in a book about witches, after Jing had seen the two of them going into this corner yesterday? It sounded like Ebony and Muriel had arranged the meeting that Ivy had witnessed them having.

  “Usual place,” Ivy muttered under her breath.

  “This proves it,” I said. “It proves that they’ve been arranging to meet each other, and more than once as well!”

  Ivy peered more closely. “And I don’t like the sound of the last line. It seems a little threatening, doesn’t it? Like Ebony’s ordering her to be there, or else.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “It does.” I placed the note back inside the black book. “And I don’t like that one bit.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  IVY

  e were stuck in a terrible position. Our note didn’t prove our suspicions that Ebony and Muriel were up to something. It was too vague, too lacking in details. It lined up with everything I’d witnessed, but nothing more. What if Ebony was forcing Muriel to meet up with her? What if she was blackmailing her in some way? It was entirely possible.

  There was no handwriting to speak of, nothing about the paper it was written on to give anything more away. I suggested we take it to Ariadne, but Scarlet thought she needed time to cool off. And besides, if we removed the note from the book, Ebony or Muriel might well realise that someone was on their trail.

  It was hopeless. I felt heartbroken and guilty, and I couldn’t stop seeing Ariadne’s hurt face in my mind. Her angry words played over and over in my ears.

  We ran into Ethel on the way out of the library. “Oh, hello,” she said. I blinked at her. Ethel usually avoided talking to me at all costs. “I was just speaking to Ebony and I’ve come to get some books,” she said. “But now I’ve found you two, I can pass on the message. Next Friday night, in the graveyard at midnight. You need to be there. Ebony has plans for us.”

  She grinned as if this were the most exciting thing in the world, and then slipped away into the library.

  I looked at Scarlet.

  “Why not?” she sighed. “It’s not as if we have anything to lose now.”

  As the week passed, I began to remember just how horrible it was being at Rookwood without Ariadne. Everything seemed darker and colder. And somehow, it was even worse knowing that she was beside us, but just out of reach. She stayed polite, greeting us, making the odd bit of small talk. But you could tell she hadn’t forgiven us and that hurt more than I could say.

  It was hard as well to watch her getting into trouble, without knowing why. She kept falling asleep, getting things wrong, causing accidents. It was always minor things, but they were building and it worried me. How bad was it going to get? Ariadne had already been expelled once before, and now Mrs Knight was trying to crack down on trouble … I didn’t even want to think about how wrong this could go.

  “If this is a curse,” Scarlet said, “we need to find out how to break it.”

  I still didn’t believe in curses, but anything was worth a try. Still, I couldn’t think of any way we would find out how to break a curse without asking Ebony.

  On Friday, at the end of our ballet lesson, Scarlet and I ended up being the last to leave. Miss Finch was in the cupboard at the back, tidying things away. I don’t know what compelled me, but realising we were nearly alone, I decided to talk to Madame Zelda.

  “Miss …” I said quietly to her. “Do you believe in curses?”

  She started, but then turned and fixed me with a curious eye. “Why do you ask?”

  Scarlet was nearby, of course, and she p
iped up, “We think our friend might be in trouble. Possibly of the magical variety.”

  Madame Zelda thought for a moment. “Where I come from, people used to speak of curses. They would say if a witch had cursed you, she would leave an onion in your bed.”

  “That’s … rather odd,” I said, lost for words. I wondered, not for the first time, exactly where it was that she had come from.

  Our eccentric ballet teacher waved her hand. “We had many beliefs.”

  “Did any of them tell you how to stop curses?” Scarlet asked.

  “Eat the onion,” Madame Zelda replied.

  We both stared at her.

  She burst out laughing. “No, no, not really. There is only one way to break a curse. Everyone knows this.”

  “And what is that?” I asked.

  “You kill the witch,” she said.

  That night, I think Scarlet and I were both tryingour best to put Madame Zelda’s words out of our minds. We were not going to do anything to hurt Ebony. Scarlet had started a sentence with, “What if we just knocked her out for a—” but I had swiftly cut her off before she could go any further down that route.

  “Even if she were a real witch,” I insisted as I brushed my hair, “which she isn’t … we wouldn’t kill her.”

  “No, you’re right,” said Scarlet. “That’s far too medieval. There must be another way.”

  For a moment, I caught myself turning to ask for Ariadne’s opinion. But there was no third person in the room, just a disappointingly empty space.

  Scarlet noticed. “We’re going to have to think this one through by ourselves.”

  I looked back at the mirror. There were no answers there, just my blank face staring back.

  Now my twin started pacing. “Maybe … maybe we can’t stop the curses that she’s already put on people. But if she’s going to attempt one tonight, we can sabotage it. Make it look like an accident so that she doesn’t suspect us.”

  “Scarlet …” I put the hairbrush down. “This isn’t magic. Us sabotaging her spell won’t stop her doing … whatever it is that’s affecting people.”

  “Oh, but it will.” My twin stopped still and grinned at me. “If we sabotage it well enough, if it’s all just a trick – her trick will fail too. She can’t go through with it if we’ve clearly ruined the spell.”