Rachel stared at him.
He had refused to answer a single question. He had not even let her ask about her beloved grandfather. Now he wanted her help? Even if he had not been asking about a matter she wished to keep a secret, she would never have told him.
The sheer audacity of his request outraged her.
“No,” she lied.
Chapter Six:
The Unparalleled Advantage of Curious Friends
Rachel stared out the north window, stunned. She felt betrayed, worse than betrayed. She felt as if her secrets had been stolen, leaving her bereft.
Without secrets, she felt powerless.
Knowing things no one else knew made her useful. She was not a great sorcerer, like Sigfried and Nastasia, or even Joy and their fellow student Wulfgang Starkadder. Those four were the best freshmen sorcerers the school had seen in generations. While she could barely manage any magic. Only with hours and hours of practice—all by herself while everyone else was off having fun—had she been able to work any spells at all.
She felt so lost here.
It had not been so bad at first. Everything had been exciting and new. Her long letters to her father had kept her grounded. Reporting to her father had helped her make sense of the disorienting events around her. Even when terrible things had happened—like someone trying to kill Valerie, or mean girls from Drake Hall paralyzing her and distorting her body, or a wraith sucking out her life essence—she had been able to bear up, because she felt as if she were part of something greater, as if she were the youngest member of the Wisecraft’s information gathering service, giving Agent Griffin valuable information that he would not have otherwise. In her mind, as she wrote each letter, she had pictured him smiling with pride.
Foolish little girl that she was.
When her father had instructed her to stop writing to him, everything fell apart. Intellectually, she understood his reasoning. He wanted her to enjoy her time at school, to stop seeking out trouble, to be an ordinary girl.
Being an ordinary girl was not an option.
The world was in terrible danger, and nobody believed her. She knew there was nothing she could do. How could a thirteen-year-old girl save the world? And yet, she felt compelled to try, as if—even though she did not have the slightest chance to stop whatever was coming—if she gave up, gave in, or even slowed down, everything would be lost.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Everything would not be lost if she stopped, but, without question, she would fall apart. When she slowed down, the terrible things that had happened during the last week came rushing back, like an avalanche. With her perfect memory, she experienced each horror as vividly as she had the first time. Every time she closed her eyes, she hit the window of her science lab again. The pain of breaking through the wooden muntins, of glass cutting her cheek, returned—striking her so hard that it sucked away her breath. She saw again the drops of blood spattered across Mr. Fisher’s discarded glasses, the unblinking form of Enoch Smithwyck lying across their alchemy tutor’s bloody body. She experienced again the humiliation of running through the darkness, one side of her body swollen and distorted, as she tried to hide from the laughter of Cydney Graves and her friends. She relived finding Valerie Hunt crying on the floor of the girl’s bathroom, blood running from her eyes and nose and more blood dying the toilet water red.
Only when she acted, when she stayed focused, could she stave off the terror, the panic, the fear.
Rachel gripped the rough stone and laid her cheek against the cool, mossy wall. She missed Gryphon Park. She missed being in a place of comfort and familiarity. She missed the long empty hallways and tall towers with no one to bully or humiliate her.
She wanted to go home.
But going home meant giving up, and she did not want to give up, not yet.
The one thing that she had to contribute was what she had learned, what she knew.
Secrets.
Secrets were her native atmosphere. She breathed them in the way mermaids breathed water. With secrets, she had something that drew the attention of people like Gaius—who otherwise would hardly care to spend time with a little girl who did not even have a figure yet. And she needed to gather as much knowledge as quickly as possible, because if the world was going to be saved, no one knew ahead of time which secret might be the one that mattered.
So she had gathered secrets to offer in return for more secrets. But the Agents of the Wisecraft had violated that bargain. They had taken what she knew and given her nothing in return. It was as if she had brought them her most precious possession—and they had stolen it.
Without secrets, she was worthless, unnecessary, marginal, as her conversation with Agent Darling had proven.
Without secrets, she felt mundane.
The feeling of betrayal stole her breath. Her thoughts seemed slow, heavy. She had never felt this way before. So flat, so empty. The trick she had learned recently, of thinking quickly, as if all the gears in her mind were engaged simultaneously, failed. If Mr. A. Square had visited his friend the cube in the world of three-dimensions and then been dropped back into Flatland, he might have felt as she did now.
It was as if her magic had been stripped away.
That was silly. She was a sorceress from a long line of sorcerers, descended from the ancient Arimaspians and from some kind of tian—Asian sky fairy—on her mother’s side. She had not possessed any particular secrets when she arrived at school. Secrets were not the source of some unknown power. Eager to prove this, Rachel whistled.
Her lips felt wooden. No sparkles filled the air. No wind came.
A cold tremor ran up her spine. She dismissed it. She was nervous. Sorcerers could not lose their magic powers because their secrets were stolen by Agents. Agents were the people who solved supernatural crimes. They were not allowed to share the information they were gathering with civilians. She could not blame them.
A tremor of fear went through her. No one else had a memory like hers, except her mother. Rachel knew her mother would never allow anyone to take all her secrets. Though Ellen Griffin was quiet and very sweet, she always kept a part of herself private, apart from others.
Trembling, Rachel pursed her lips again and concentrated.
Caw.
The sound came from the south. Spinning, she looked through the southern window. She saw nothing of note. Then, she thought back two seconds.
Atop the highest bell tower of Roanoke Hall, a giant, jet-black raven with eyes as red as newly-pooled blood sat watching her.
Rachel grew weak with fear. Then unexpectedly, relief rushed through her.
She still had one secret.
She had not thought to tell the Agents that her perfect memory allowed her to see the Raven without the help of the Spell of True Recitation.
Suddenly, the gears of her thoughts engaged again, whirling. Her mind sprang into vibrant three-dimensions. Experimentally, she whistled. Silvery sparks left her lips and blew straw across the stones.
Lightheaded with relief, Rachel slumped against the mossy stone wall and breathed.
• • •
Rachel crossed the belfry to the southern window where Nastasia, Sigfried and Lucky stood looking out at the campus. Siggy was leaning over the sill with a maniacal grin on his face, aiming a gold coin he held between his fingers.
“Do you think if we throw hard enough we could stick this into someone’s skull?” Siggy asked Lucky in the same enthusiastic tone he always used when he spoke about killing and blowing things up.
“Good gracious, Sigfried! We don’t kill our fellow students here at Roanoke!” Rachel waved her hands. She stomped up beside him. “Really, I shouldn’t have to keep telling you.”
Lucky flew to Sigfried’s hand and kissed the coin repeatedly. “Are you crazy! That’s part of our hoard! I know every piece—by name. That one’s…” the dragon peered closely with one huge jade green eye, “Alfred Pennywiggle the Three Hundred and Forty-Second! I can’t believe you would
throw away our gold, Boss. Would you defenestrate an infant? Toss your own flesh and blood out the window?”
“Oh, good point.” Siggy polished the coin against his shoulder and stuck it in his pocket. He pulled out an apple core, brown and covered with lint. “How about this?”
Nastasia pinched her nose shut. “That’s most unsanitary, Mr. Smith.”
“Hmm.” Lucky curled through the air like a dancer’s ribbon. “Something to eat later, versus the havoc of pelting the unsuspecting from above. Pelt, I say, pelt! Pelt!”
Siggy drew back his arm and threw.
“Siggy!” Rachel lunged forward but failed to catch his arm. From below came a thump and a hoarse cry. Rachel winced in sympathy for the victim.
“Really, Mr. Smith, that is most unbecoming.” The lovely princess frowned sternly. “Not the behavior expected of a knight in service to a princess.”
“Oh! Right! I’m your knight now!” Sigfried straightened and bowed. “Your highness. What can I do for you?”
“You can stop throwing objects at innocent bystanders,” Nastasia said severely.
“That wasn’t an innocent bystander,” objected Sigfried, “that was Remus Starkadder.”
“Oh.” The princess blinked, perhaps recalling the pain of the phantom fire Remus had used to torture her. “In that case…No! Wait! It is still not becoming behavior, despite what I may have suffered. After all, the poor young man was under the control of a geas. He is not responsible for what he did while under a spell.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Rachel stated forcefully. “His eyes were clear. He and his brother Fenris participated on purpose. Just like Jonah Strega.”
Nastasia inclined her head toward Sigfried. “Carry on, Sir Knight.”
“He’s gone inside.” Sigfried scowled in disappointment. He had not turned back to look out the window. Rachel started to ask him how he knew but then remembered. His magic amulet let him see all around him without moving. “Besides, I’m out of apple cores.”
Stretching, Sigfried left the window and began meandering around the belfry. His long, sinewy red and gold dragon snaked after him. Rachel leaned over the sill they had vacated and stared out at the twilit campus. The feeling of powerlessness that had gripped her earlier had receded, but the ache of betrayal still pained her. True, she had not technically been betrayed, as nothing had been promised. And yet, she could not shake the feeling of bitterness.
It was like what happened with her father all over again.
She could have been such a useful ally, both to her father and to the Agents. It was their loss. She would find the answers to her questions. Of that, she was certain. When she did, she would not be so quick to share what she discovered.
Ching-Chang-Chong. Lucky weaved back and forth between the chimes, setting them ringing. Their deep tones resonated throughout the belfry. Rachel grabbed her ears.
“Don’t do that!” she called. “Those maintain the obscuration protecting Roanoke Island.”
Lucky paused and looked at Siggy, who shrugged.
“Probably better not to call up those shadowy thingamy-whatsits again,” said Siggy. “Not to mention that we don’t want to draw the Agents’ attention to the fact that they left us up here.”
“Oh, good point.” The dragon dropped to the ground and began slithering on the ruby scales of its belly around the huge brass cylinder of the lantern.
Sigfried looked at the colored mirrors. “So, what are these? Are they all for thinking at?”
Rachel left the window and joined him. She shook her head, her dark locks flying hither and thither. “No. Only the golden one. The green is a talking glass—a big version of the calling cards Agent Darling used to speak to the other Agents—the ones you want me to order for you. Talking glasses allow you to talk to other talking glasses in distant places.”
“Wicked!” Siggy’s eyes glittered. He peered at the green mirror. “And the blue one? Is this a smoking glass for making fires? Or a scratching glass for hard-to-reach places that itch?”
Rachel snorted in amusement. “No, that’s a walking glass. Only it isn’t working.”
“How do you know?”
“Walking glasses and travel glasses—which is a fancy name for the really big walking glasses—are always paired,” Rachel explained as they peered into the blue mirror. “When you look through one, you see the other side of the far glass. This one just reflects us, like a regular mirror. That means there is no second mirror somewhere else to which it is tied.”
The princess glided across the belfry to join them as well. Tilting her head, she regarded the blue-tinted walking glass. “Perhaps the second glass has been broken.”
“Perhaps,” Rachel nodded, “or the wards that keep walking glasses from working on campus have disrupted the consanguinity between the two halves.”
“Con-sane-guinea-piggies?” Siggy yawned, patting his mouth. “Is there going to be a test? I assume that’s what Alice-In-Wonderland actually fell through—a walking glass?”
“Alice Liddell was a famous sorceress,” Rachel said. “Her great-granddaughter goes to the Lower School. She’ll be a freshman here next year.”
Siggy shrugged, uninterested. “What about this purple one?”
They stopped before the cracked mirror.
“I don’t know,” Rachel admitted.
Siggy pulled his robe away from his chest and peeked underneath. He glanced back and forth between something under his clothing and the mirror. “Whatever it is, it is the same dark purple color as the center of my all-seeing amulet.”
“Really?” Rachel’s eyes grew larger by the second. “Could it…” She reached out and touched a smooth section of broken mirror. Under the cracked glass, she could see the antique silver of the backing. “Do you think it could be a looking glass?”
Lucky slithered through the straw until he reached the purple mirror, then he straightened his legs and raised his head, sniffing the cracked mirror. “That’s a looking glass, all right.”
“Walking and talking glasses are real, but looking glasses, real ones, only exist in fairytales,” the princess objected.
“Isn’t ‘looking glass’ just another term for a regular mirror?” Sigfried asked.
Rachel shook her head. “The Unwary use our term, but they do not understand what it means. I mean a proper looking glass—the kind that can look anywhere.”
Nastasia peered at the cracked mirror with interest. “In fairytales, looking glasses are used for seeing far away. Such as when the wombat is spying on the kookaburra so as to fulfill its wager with the dingo. Or when the merchant’s daughter wanted to see her father, and the beast let her use his magic mirror.”
“Do you mean Belle?” Sigfried scratched his head. “Isn’t she an inventor’s daughter?”
“Certainly not,” Rachel corrected him absently, as she ran her fingertips over this object of wonder out of legend. “Her father is a merchant coming back from a far land with presents for everyone except his youngest daughter who wanted a rose. That’s why he takes the rose from the Beast’s garden.”
“I don’t remember that from the cartoon.”
Rachel paused and squinted at him. “Cartoon? It’s a fairytale.”
The princess made a dismissive gesture. “The particulars are of no import. Looking glasses are legendary. This one is broken, but the one around Mr. Smith’s neck still works.”
“So, your amulet is a looking glass!” Rachel said, impressed. “That’s smashing!”
“I can see all around me in a sphere—up and down as well,” replied Sigfried. “And, by the way, never, ever again suggest that adults look at my memory! Do you know how difficult it was not to remember having looked through walls and behind closed doors?”
Rachel pressed her hands against her mouth in dismay. No wonder his memories seemed so disjointed. He must have felt as awful as she did when she was forced to blurt things out without discretion. “Oh! Sorry!”
“How far up and d
own?” The princess asked.
“Well, for instance, right now,” Sigfried paused, apparently examining the lower floors, “the Agents are interrogating Rachel’s boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” Rachel squeaked, outraged.
Sigfried grinned. The princess sighed, as if the whole topic pained her.
“Wait!” Rachel cried. “They’re talking to Gaius?”
An idea seized her—an idea so marvelous that her whole body went rigid with anticipation. If the Agents would not answer her questions willingly, might she be able to glean some information from them anyway? After all, they owed her.
“Sigfried!” she cried. “Show us in the thinking glass! You should still be attuned.”
They sprinted back to the thinking glass. As soon as Sigfried placed his hand on its golden surface, a picture sprang up. Unlike his long-term memory, the images of what he was actively seeing with his amulet were crisp and clear. In the disenchanting chamber below, Gaius landed on his feet as the glittery motes of the Spell of True Recitation faded away. Upon seeing him, Rachel’s heart did a dance of joy. She felt a pang of disappointment, though. She would so have liked to see him in mid-air with sparkles in his hair.
“How did you find that, Mr. Valiant?” Agent MacDannan lowered her bagpipes and wiped the sweat from her forehead. Her tone was light, but her eyes glinted with interest.
“Very cold.” Gaius shivered and chafed his arms.
The Agent’s brows arched in surprise, and the princess nodded in approval. So Gaius was an honest boy. Rachel grinned. That was good news.
“Do you work for Dr. Mordeau?” the Agent asked.
“No, I don’t work for Dr. Mordeau.” Gaius’s voice lacked its normal casual drawl. Rachel guessed that the uncharacteristic flatness was the result of the truth-compelling magic. Also, he sounded more Cornish. “I work for Vladimir Von Dread.”
Rachel grabbed the crimson mane that ran the length of Lucky’s serpentine body. It was much fluffier than she had expected. Embarrassed, she let go of the dragon and picked up her broom. Downstairs, MacDannan’s exclamation of surprise spooked her rat. It scuttled under the wide collar of her Inverness cloak. The smile the Agent had begun to give Gaius froze on her face.
The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel (A Book of Unexpected Enlightenment 2) Page 6
