The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy

by Nikki Loftin

There was something I should remember, I thought. Something about trees. I shook the thought away. Andrew was more important than trees. Maybe he won’t come, I thought. Maybe he got his parents to believe him. Maybe he faked sick two days in a row. Maybe . . .

  Hope died when a blue minivan rolled past me up to the doors and let out a single passenger. Andrew.

  He got out of the van and took a step toward the door.

  “Andrew!” I called, but the roar of the engine must have covered the sound. The van pulled away, and I saw that Principal Trapp was there, with her hand on his arm.

  I had missed my chance to warn him.

  There was no way I would be able to overcome the witches. It wasn’t just the magic thing; they were adults and I was a kid. It was a matter of size. They could kill me the old-fashioned way, no spells necessary.

  Even if Andrew could shake the spell, we couldn’t do it, just the two of us.

  The kitchen staff! I sprinted around to the side of the building, hoping no one was looking out the windows, and ran up to the side door that was closest to the cafeteria. I could see part of the playground there, and the mounds of earth beyond the climbing frames. And just past that, the soccer fields surrounded by those trees. Dozens of trees.

  It didn’t dawn on me, until I entered the empty kitchen, what had happened.

  The copper pots sat, unwashed, in the sinks. The stove was cold, and the lights were off. They were gone. They had all disappeared. Dead?

  There was something on the floor by the back door. I stepped closer and recognized it. It was the knife, the paring knife Otto had taken to kill Ms. Morrigan. Blood gleamed on the blade.

  I stuffed my fist in my mouth to keep from crying out.

  She never wasted anything, Otto had said.

  She had changed the staff into trees.

  Otto would never see his family again. Vasalisa, with her dark eyes, would stand silent guard over the bones of her sister and the mound of earth that had been her love, Gustav.

  My spirit—what little courage I’d had—crumpled like a tin can underfoot. Everything was ruined; I had destroyed it with my foolish plan. I was as responsible for their deaths as I had been for my mother’s.

  I was the one to blame, again.

  I felt dizzy and reached for the wall to steady myself.

  I heard a thin, raspy laugh.

  Ms. Morrigan leaned on the door, blocking my way to the cafeteria. Her hair was down and patches of it had fallen out. Her arms were covered with dark blotches that seemed to move just underneath her skin, and her face—I tried not to shudder. It was covered with oozing sores and what looked like burn marks.

  She smiled, and I saw that some of her teeth were missing. The ones that were left were sharp and small, rodent-like. They were stained red, and I wondered if I was too late. Was that blood? Had she eaten Andrew? She saw me shudder, laughed again, and spoke.

  “What’s this? A little mouse, sneaking into the kitchen for a nibble? Are all your other mousey friends gone?” She clicked her teeth together. “What a shame. You’ll have no one to play with now. Maybe I’ll play with you. Hmm? Would you enjoy that?”

  “N-no,” I stammered. I stood up straighter. “Just . . . just leave me alone.”

  “Or what? You’ll hurt me? Kill me?” She laughed, louder this time, then caught herself and spoke quietly. “That’s what they did to poor Threnody, isn’t it? The servants caught her by surprise and killed her, with a dirty kitchen knife.” She smiled a small, wicked smile. “Not that I cared. Threnody never would shut up. Now it’s quiet, and it’s just me and my mother . . . and you, of course. We mustn’t forget little gifted Lorelei.”

  “I’m n-not gifted,” I said, taking a step back, toward the door to the playground. “You know that.”

  “Of course I know that, you wretched imbecile!” She glanced at the door again and then lowered her voice. I wondered who there was to hear, and then knew. The principal. She didn’t know Ms. Morrigan was here, talking to me. And Ms. Morrigan didn’t want her to know, either. Why not? What was going on . . . ? Then I realized. I knew the look in her eyes. I felt it every time my dad had cuddled with Molly instead of tucking me into bed, every time he had backed her up when she had been mean to me. She was jealous, jealous that Principal Trapp wanted me to be her daughter. No. More than jealous, I thought, as Ms. Morrigan stalked toward me slowly, one silent step at a time over the cold, white tile. Her eyes shone with hatred and betrayal.

  “You’re useless. A waste of space.” She rushed toward me, and I tried to protect my face with my hands and arms.

  Then I felt warm air rush past my face. Air, not her fists. I opened my eyes. She was holding the back door open.

  “Go,” she commanded. “Run away. Run for your life, and never come back. She has a daughter; she doesn’t need a new one, a stupid one. Run away, little mouse. Go!”

  My muscles bunched up to obey. I wanted to run; this was exactly what I had hoped for. It had to be a trick. What was the catch? I had to act now; I didn’t have time to think.

  I took a deep breath, ready to jump up—and I smelled something strange. Wood smoke. I looked away from Ms. Morrigan’s face, through the doorway. I could see the playground just past her, the sand white and glimmering in the early sunlight. The trees as still as statues, not a leaf moving. There was no fire outside.

  It was inside. The firewood next to the giant soup pot must have been lit. Andrew was about to be killed, and eaten, and the witches would regain their power.

  “Well, mouse? What are you waiting for? Shoo.” Ms. Morrigan took a step to the side, holding the door wider, and her foot rattled against something. It was the bone bucket, half-full of ground-up bone ready for the playground.

  If I ran through that door, Andrew would be nothing but soup and glimmering sand that burned blue. Of course, even if I stayed, he would probably still die.

  I stood up. Ms. Morrigan smiled and laughed again; she had won.

  The blood rushed out of my face. I knew I would die if I stayed.

  So I ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:

  DEEPER THAN PAIN

  I ran straight toward the door to the cafeteria, yelling the whole way.

  “Principal Trapp!” I made it into the hallway before Ms. Morrigan caught me. I felt her sharpened nails cutting into my arms, her bony fingers bruising me. If the principal hadn’t heard me, I was dead for sure.

  But she had heard. The door to the teachers’ workroom swung open, and she stepped into the hallway. She had changed. Her hair was down, falling past her shoulders in a shining black curtain. Her eyes sparked green, and her smile at seeing me disappeared when she saw Ms. Morrigan holding my arm.

  “What are you doing, Alva?” she said calmly, in a voice that could have frozen a lake. “Why are you hurting your little sister?”

  “She’s not my sister,” Ms. Morrigan ground out. “My sister died last night. This little girl is nothing. She’s not worthy to be one of us.”

  “I think you underestimate her,” the principal said. “And anyway, don’t forget: We need three.” She flicked her fingers, and I felt Ms. Morrigan’s hands fly away from my arm like I was suddenly too hot to touch. But then something strange happened. The principal wrinkled her brow in pain. Wrinkles cut deep lines into her cheeks, and around her lips. I watched her fingers move toward her pocket; she grabbed hold of something there, and it made the wrinkles disappear.

  Her wand. She had her wand in her pocket.

  She smiled and motioned me closer. “I think many people underestimate little Lorelei, don’t they?”

  I wasn’t sure what she was asking, but I nodded and walked toward her. I would play along. “But not you,” I said, trying for a smile.

  “No, not me,” she agreed. “I knew what you were capable of the
first time we met. In fact, you exceeded my expectations.” The side of her face twitched. “I knew you would do wonderful, terrible things; you’ve done them before, haven’t you? But what I didn’t know was how much charisma you had.”

  “C-charisma?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Don’t be modest,” she said. “You subverted every one of my kitchen servants. You took an entire staff who had been party to years of magical conditioning to insure they never rebelled . . . and you turned them into killers in a few short days.” She walked the last few steps to meet me and ran one hand over my head.

  I waited for pain, but she didn’t hurt me. Instead, she petted me, and I felt a warm haze of affection fill me, then fade as quickly as it had come. I glanced back at the hand that was still in her pocket; she was grasping the magic wand even tighter. She had almost no magic left, I realized. She would have to eat soon.

  “Oh, Lorelei,” she whispered, stroking my hair. “You will be the perfect daughter, won’t you?”

  “No!” Ms. Morrigan’s shout echoed in the hallway, bouncing off the walls and floor. “You don’t need her. We don’t need her! I’m your daughter!” She rushed toward us, her shoes clapping against the floor, her hair flaring back from her withered face. “We don’t need three!”

  She came at me like the principal wasn’t even there, came at me with her fingers stretched out toward my neck.

  “You’re right, Alva,” Principal Trapp whispered, and pulled the wand free from her pocket. “We don’t really need three at all.”

  She waved her wand in the air, and static electricity rushed over my skin.

  The magic came and went, leaving Ms. Morrigan on the floor, a pile of bones that turned to dust as we watched. The dust wasn’t white. It was black and gray, flecked with silver. It wouldn’t make good playground sand, I thought, trying not to laugh hysterically.

  The principal turned to me, and the emotion on her face faded slowly, replaced by a flat expression that had no spark, no soul behind it. “Now for you.”

  My breath started coming faster, like I was running a race, though I was standing still. I could feel my pulse pound in my temples, in my neck, in my ears. I heard someone panting, fast, too fast. In seconds, there were stars blinking at the corners of my eyes.

  “Breathe deeply, dear,” the principal said. “You’re hyperventilating. I can’t have you passing out now, can I? I’m going to need your help.” I tried to breathe slowly, and she kneeled down next to me, staring into my eyes. I swam in those deep, green pools for a moment or two, long enough to remember how to breathe, how to think. Her eyes shone with tears—for Alva? She had killed her own daughter. She should cry.

  “You killed your daughter,” I said, without thinking. “How?”

  Green eyes flared with cold fire. “As easily as you killed your mother, Lorelei.”

  “Not like that,” I said. “It wasn’t like what you did.” My eyes moved back to the pile of gray dust. How had she done it? Destroyed someone she had loved for years, decades maybe, without blinking. Now, that was evil.

  Inside, something began to move, the solid weight that had pressed against my heart shifting after a year of pain. It moved slowly, like the earth when a seed underneath finally sprouts and pushes upward. Something was unfurling in my mind, a new idea, growing.

  I had never done anything like that. I couldn’t have.

  “It was exactly like that,” she murmured. “Minus the wand, I’m sure. But death is death. Murder is murder.”

  “I never said I murdered my mother.” The idea grew a bit more, a soft shoot showing through the hard-packed earth.

  Her fingers were cold on my face, as cold as Ms. Morrigan’s had ever been.

  “That’s the thing about being with me. You didn’t have to say it out loud”—she paused to run her hand down my long hair—“silly little Lorelei bird.”

  Threnody had called me that, too, I remembered. Right before she had forced me to sing. She had been trying to make fun of the way my mother had sung to me. Now Principal Trapp was doing the same thing.

  More jealousy. The principal was jealous of the love I felt—still felt—for my mother.

  Principal Trapp had said she had a dark secret, too. She wanted someone who knew this, loved her anyway, and accepted her. She wanted me to be as evil as she was, needed to believe I was like her. Why?

  She was lonely like me. No one else understood. No one else had done what she did. No one else had killed her own mother.

  I looked again at the pile of dust that had been Ms. Morrigan.

  The thought blossomed at last. If this was killing, I hadn’t killed Mom.

  I hadn’t looked into my mother’s eyes and wished her death. So maybe . . . just maybe. I thought of Mom, of the way she had looked on that terrible day, and in the hospital. I remembered, and waited for the pain.

  But the pain never came. The dried splinters of guilt that had pressed against me for so long were fading, changing into something else, something tender and familiar. I took a deep breath, and for a moment, smelled the skin on my mother’s neck.

  The memory made me smile.

  “What is that smile? What have you done?” the principal murmured. Our eyes were still locked. “You were dark inside, as dark as me, a moment ago. And now . . .” She began to tremble, like a volcano threatening to erupt. “There’s not a shadow of evil on your useless heart. What have you done?”

  “I woke up,” I said, wondering at the lightness inside me. I took another breath, and for the first time in more than a year, the bands of pain that had been on my heart were gone. As I breathed, memories of my mother flashed through my mind, brushing petal-soft against my heart as they appeared. Her quick smile, her voice, light and meadowlark high, her eyes that were—now that I could hold the memory of them in my mind without the familiar agony of guilt—not at all the same green as the principal’s. The memories of my mother filled me until I had to fight not to shout from the sheer joy of holding her in my mind again. “You were wrong. I didn’t kill my mother.”

  “I looked into your mind. You remembered it,” she shouted. “You were certain of it!”

  “Then I was wrong, too. I loved my mother. And I love my father and even Bryan, too. They’re my family.” I remembered the words my dad had said when he dropped me off at Splendid that first day. “Family takes care of family.”

  “You have nothing in common with those people, Lorelei. You’re like me.” Her voice was pleading now, lonely. I supposed she was alone. All of her servants changed into trees and hills, Threnody gone, her adopted daughter dead by her own hand. “Some of us have to make our own families, sweetheart. I chose you. I chose you.”

  A tear fell down her face and splashed onto her white blouse.

  I heard a muffled sound from the back of the workroom. It sounded like panting and a smothered gasp of pain.

  Andrew.

  I spoke up. “I know you chose me. But I can’t—I won’t—choose you. Your life. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

  Another tear fell. “Don’t you care that you’re hurting me?”

  I thought about Vasalisa and Gustav. About Otto. The truth was hard, but I spoke softly.

  “No.”

  She straightened an inch at a time, her eyes growing wintry as she pulled away. “Stupid little girl. Alva was right about you. Alva . . .” Her voice trailed off, as she looked back at the remains of her daughter, now a mound of dark sand and fabric scraps on the floor. “You’ll pay for that.”

  The wand appeared in her hand. “Into the room. You’ll help with the feast, and then . . . I’ll show you what it means to be my family. Everything you can be, what you can do. You’ll change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” I said, looking away.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I�
�ll just have to console myself,” she said, her voice filled with bitter laughter. “Waste not, want not, isn’t that right?” I turned my head back. She was licking her lips, watching me like a cat watches a sparrow. “Scrappy, aren’t you? I’ll have to watch for bones.”

  She jabbed me forward with her wand into the workroom. Andrew was tied up with very non-magical-looking rope in the corner, and the enormous copper soup pot was sitting across the room on a giant, flat metal base that looked like steel. Wood had been stacked all around the bottom of the pot and was burning merrily, crackling and popping like it could hardly wait for the feast. The window was open, and the smoke from the burning wood poured out through the small opening, but the smell filled the room.

  The witch shoved me into the room and pulled the door shut behind us. The lock clicked and her wand was in her hand again.

  “Pile more logs under the pot,” she ordered, and I found myself moving toward the pile of wood by the wall, even though I didn’t want to.

  Was she still that powerful? I looked back. Her hair was mussed; she ran her fingers through it, patting it back, and I saw a clump of it come away in her hand. “Bah!” she muttered, and threw the hair into the fire. It smelled like burning rubber. The smoke that poured out seared my nostrils.

  She was getting weaker. Maybe I could stop walking. I resisted the urge to run to the woodpile and found I could move smoothly, slowly. I could—almost—stop altogether.

  I picked up the firewood and set it down, just far enough from the fire that it couldn’t possibly light, and shuffled back, slowly, to get the second load.

  “What are you doing?” The witch’s voice was shrill for the first time.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, stalling for time. “I put the logs under the pot.”

  “Closer to the fire, you stupid girl,” she rasped. “Right into the flames.”

  “Oh,” I said, nodding like I’d just understood. “This way?” I picked up one of the logs and threw it at the burning wood. Sparks flew. Just as I’d hoped, the log jostled the other pieces of wood away from the pot. The water in the pot would never boil at this rate. I could do this all day.