My heart suddenly felt so weary. I had thought that I could trust Cal, but it seemed that he had forgotten me. And now that I was back at school, the old nagging disappointment that Josh regarded me as nothing more than a friend—a really nice girl, good old Sarah—was creeping over me again. But I forced myself to walk briskly down the door-lined corridor, telling myself off for being weak and self-indulgent. After all, I had something more important than a schoolgirl romance. I had friends, true deep friends: my sisters, Evie, Helen, and Agnes. That was what was important to me, not falling in love. That’s what I told myself, and tried to believe.
I opened a door that led into a plain, bare room. It was smaller than some of the Wyldcliffe dorms, with only three narrow beds, but it was furnished in the same austere style as the rest. “Your bed is at the end, under the window, next to mine. Look, the porter has brought your bags up already. Ruby Rogerson has the other bed. She’s a nice girl. Very quiet, brilliant at math. Caroline Woodford used to be in this dorm, but her parents have moved to Australia and she’s gone with them.”
Velvet stared around the stark white room and exclaimed in disgust, “My God, it’s like a prison! No, it’s worse. At least in prison you’re allowed to put up pictures on the walls. At my other boarding schools we could decorate our dorms. This is so—so cold and weird. It’s like they expect us to be like nuns or something.”
“This is Wyldcliffe. They do things differently here.”
Velvet sank down onto her bed, and for a moment I sensed that her despair was genuine. It wasn’t about sharing a room, or not being allowed to put up some Metallica poster; it was about being left here all alone by her parents. For all her celebrity connections, she had been dumped at Wyldcliffe by her mother, who was too beautiful and busy to care for a difficult teenage daughter. I went over to Velvet and gently touched her on the shoulder.
“You said I was good,” I murmured. “I’m not really, not so much. But I do want to help you if I can. Remember that.”
Velvet pulled away impatiently. “I’m perfectly okay.” She began grabbing stuff out of her Louis Vuitton suitcases, scattering clothes all over her bed. “If I’m going to wear this repulsive uniform, I’d better get on with it. Aren’t you going to meet your friend, the one with the gorgeous red hair? I got the feeling she didn’t like me very much.”
“Evie’s had a hard time lately,” I began, automatically protective. “She’s been through a lot. She lived with her grandmother, but she died and so Evie had to come here, and it’s not been easy—”
“Yeah, whatever. She just doesn’t want me messing with her stable boy property. I can see why he’s keen on her, though; she’s stunning, like a kind of Victorian mermaid. Hey—she looks a bit like Lady Agatha in that freaky old painting the principal was on about.”
“Lady Agnes . . . um . . . do you think so? Gosh, look at the time, it’s getting late.”
“It’s okay, go downstairs.” Velvet busied herself with her clothes. “I’ll be fine.”
“Will you find your way to the dining hall?”
“I found my way round Manhattan last New Year’s Eve when I was stoned out of my mind, so I think I can manage.” She stopped tugging at her cases for a minute and looked up at me. “Look, Sarah, you don’t have to be good and nice and pretend that you like me or want to look after me. I don’t need you and I don’t need anyone else. I just want to get out of here, and I usually get what I want, whatever it takes. Don’t get in my way.”
I felt strangely exposed and foolish as I stood there, as if she knew more about me than could be possible and that her warning went deeper than her words. It seemed to me that Velvet had a bitter anger inside her that would poison anyone who got too close, and I found myself wishing that she hadn’t come to Wyldcliffe. There was nothing I could do about her, though, or her problems. I had other things to worry about.
Leaving Velvet in the dorm, I hurried down the marble stairs. Evie would be waiting for me by now. But when I got to the entrance hall, there was no sign of her. I opened the front door and stood for a moment on the worn stone step, looking down the drive. The late afternoon sun was fading in a hazy glow of gold. Blackbirds were beginning their evening song. The hills that ranged around the ancient Abbey seemed so peaceful, but they had been forged by gigantic upheavals: glaciers and landfalls and earthquakes. What new shocks and upheavals might be waiting for us in this apparently peaceful landscape? Again, I felt exposed and vulnerable, as though I were in full view of the enemy. I tried to shake off my mood and turned my thoughts back to Maria. She must have stood on this same step and seen the same views when she had been a Wyldcliffe student. I wondered what she had thought of the school, and who her friends had been, and whether she had ever mourned for her Gypsy mother. What had she known and felt and seen at Wyldcliffe that could help me now?
“Maria?” I reached out for her in my thoughts. “Maria, can you hear me? Are we still in danger? What should I do?” The wind stirred the leaves in the branches of the great oak trees that grew on either side of the drive, but no answers came to me. I stifled my disappointment and glanced at my watch. The next moment Evie walked up to the front steps from the direction of the stables.
“Hey,” she said quietly. She smiled at me, but her eyes seemed to hold tears. I smiled back. I wanted to help her, now that she was back at the place where Sebastian had lived and died. Just being here must be an effort for Evie, I thought, and I wished I knew how to comfort her.
She doesn’t want your comfort, she wants Josh, said a nasty little voice in my head, but I ignored it. I linked arms with Evie, and we set off walking down the drive. “Tell me all about it, if it helps,” I said.
Evie squeezed my arm gratefully. “Thanks, Sarah. You’re so good. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Good Sarah. Kind Sarah. That’s what I had to be—today, tomorrow, forever.
Chapter Four
We slipped through the gates at the end of the drive, into the lane that led to the village. In the other direction a path wound its way up to the moors, and to the places that had burned themselves into our memories—Uppercliffe Farm, where Agnes had hidden her little daughter from the eyes of the world, and Fairfax Hall, Sebastian’s childhood home.
I heard Evie catch her breath. “It’s so odd,” she said in a low voice. “This place is full of such beauty and yet such pain. I keep thinking, I first met Sebastian here, I first saw Agnes there, we first made our Circle there . . . but now that’s all over.”
“Is it?”
She looked at me with a faintly stubborn expression. “It has to be. I’ve been thinking about it a lot during the holidays. Sebastian wanted me to move on, and I have to do that, for his sake as well as my own. I have to try and live like he wanted me to—I have to try to be happy, so that his death was worthwhile. It was his gift to me as well as mine to him. I have to try and live now as though meeting Sebastian never happened.”
It sounded like something she had told herself over and over.
“But what about the Mystic Way? What about your powers?” Evie’s own mystic element was water, and the term before, she had used the Talisman, the necklace that was her precious heirloom, to share Agnes’s powers of fire. “You can’t pretend that wasn’t real. You’re still part of that.”
“No, I don’t mean it wasn’t real,” Evie replied, shaking her head. “Loving Sebastian was the most real thing I ever experienced. But I can’t live in the past. It’s over now. And I think perhaps our powers were lent to us to save him, just for that time and for that specific purpose. To save one immortal soul. That was worth doing, wasn’t it?” Her eyes shone with tears, but she held them back. “I’m so grateful that we could be part of the Mystic Way to help Sebastian, and so grateful for everything you and Helen did for me, but . . . well . . .” Her voice faltered, and she swallowed hard.
“Well . . . what? What is it, Evie?”
Her expression hardened. “Sebastian is dead, Sarah. I
don’t want to rake everything up again. I just can’t. I don’t think I even want to talk about it anymore. We have to move forward.”
“And is Josh part of moving forward?” I asked casually, but I felt a kick of jealousy in the pit of my stomach as I spoke the words. I drew my arm out of Evie’s.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I told Josh last term I wasn’t ready for another relationship. Oh, I hate that word! It sounds so pompous.” She reached down and picked a handful of daisies from the long grass at the side of the lane and began to knot them together in a chain. “I just don’t know. I really like Josh. He’s warm and kind . . . and full of life. He makes me feel like the sun is shining.” She suddenly threw the flowers to the ground. “We’re just friends. That’s enough for the moment, isn’t it? I don’t want to worry and analyze everything. I just want to be happy.”
“Don’t we all,” I said, unable to keep a note of bitterness from my voice.
“God, that sounded really superficial and selfish, didn’t it? I don’t mean it like that. It’s just that everything has been so tough.” Evie gave a long sigh. “When Frankie got sick and I had to come here, my life changed. I still miss her terribly. And then losing Sebastian . . . Thank God I’ve got you and Helen.”
“And Josh.”
“Yeah, and Josh too.” Evie looked at me anxiously. “You don’t mind, do you, Sarah, me being friends with Josh?”
“Mind? Why should I mind?” I forced myself to smile. “It’s great that you’ve got someone to talk to, honestly. But you must realize that Josh wants to be more than your friend. You might end up hurting him.”
Again, the slightly stubborn look came over her face. “Every connection—friendship, love, whatever—can be painful. It’s all a huge risk. Life is a risk. Josh is prepared to take the risk. Don’t you see, Sarah, that we have to be ready for anything? We have to be big enough for whatever happens next. And does it really matter that things are sometimes painful, if you’re really feeling and—and doing—and experiencing life? Sebastian told me to live, good and bad, joy and sorrow. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
I didn’t reply. That was my problem, I thought dully. I hadn’t done or experienced anything, not really. I had been too timid, afraid of hurting people, afraid of getting hurt. And all that had left me with was this anxious, aching emptiness. At least Evie was alive, like a bright flame.
We walked the rest of the way in silence and soon reached the village with its rows of cottages and blackened stone church. The village store was closed, and there was no one about except a solitary old man walking his dog.
“Where do you think Helen will be?”
“Where else?” I led the way to the churchyard. Slanting rows of headstones and black yew trees gave the place a gloomy air, despite the bright bunches of flowers that had been left here and there on the graves. We spotted Helen sitting alone by an old-fashioned tomb that was over-shadowed by a large statue of an angel. This was the earthly resting place of Lady Agnes Templeton. The local people whispered various superstitions about this spot. There were rumors that her ghost sometimes walked up to the door of the church and mysteriously passed inside, and that touching her tomb could heal the sick. They even claimed that one day Agnes would return to Wyldcliffe in its hour of greatest need. Most of it was just gossip and hysteria, but even Miss Scratton had said that her grave was a place of protection for us. I could understand why Helen wanted to sit here peacefully before facing the new term, trying to draw strength from the past. She had never fitted in at Wyldcliffe, and most of the students gave her a hard time.
Helen was sitting on the ground, with her arms clasped around her knees. Her fair hair tumbled around her face and hid her expression. For a moment I thought she was crying, but she jumped up and smiled determinedly when I called her name, and offered me her cool cheek to kiss.
“How are you, Helen?” I asked.
“Oh . . . I don’t know . . . fine, I suppose,” she answered, but she didn’t meet my eye. “I was just thinking about Agnes. Whether we would ever see her again.”
The three of us stood in front of the tomb without saying anything; then we linked hands and paid silent tribute to our secret sister. The stone angel held an inscription that had been weathered by time and wind and rain. It read LADY AGNES TEMPLETON, BELOVED OF THE LORD. For an instant it seemed to me that the angel faded and Agnes stood there in its place, looking down at us with love and serenity in her mild eyes. Then she vanished too and instead a figure dressed in black snarled at us, snapping with hatred. The next second everything was just as it had been: the quiet graveyard, the moss-covered tomb, and my friends lost in their thoughts. I stepped back and wrenched my hands from theirs. They didn’t seem to have seen anything.
“Let’s get back to school,” I said hurriedly. “We shouldn’t be out late. They’ll soon be ringing the bell for supper.”
“Is it that time already?” asked Evie in surprise.
Helen glanced at me searchingly, then sighed. “Yeah, let’s go back. Might as well face it.”
I hurried them along, marching briskly back down the lane and toward the school gates.
“So, did you see your father in the holidays, Helen?” asked Evie.
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
“Mmm . . . strange.”
“Strange how?” I asked.
“Well . . .” Helen frowned. “I thought it was going to be wonderful, but it wasn’t like that. Because I’ve only just met Tony, I don’t really feel any connection with him yet. But the connection must be there all the same. I mean, he is actually my father. I still can’t really take it in.”
“I guess it will take time,” I said reassuringly.
Helen looked troubled, then said in a rush, “It’s weird to think of him being in love with my mother. He showed me photos of when they were young, before she left him when she found out that she was expecting me. He talked about how beautiful she was, full of spirit and adventure.” She hunched her shoulders miserably. “I never knew that side of her.”
It must have been so hard for Helen, I thought, being brought up in an orphanage, not knowing either of her parents. And then Mrs. Hartle had sought her out and brought her to Wyldcliffe, yet she had forbidden Helen to tell anyone that she was the High Mistress’s daughter. And when Helen had refused to use her elemental powers to join Mrs. Hartle’s coven, her mother had rejected her utterly. Only after the High Mistress’s death last term had Miss Scratton been able to track down Helen’s father.
“What’s your dad like?” asked Evie. “Is he married?”
“Yes. His wife, Rachel, is very nice. She’s a doctor. They have two little boys.”
“So they are your brothers? Helen, that’s so great!” I exclaimed. I would have loved to have a brother. My mother had told me that she had lost a baby boy the year after I was born and had not been able to have any more children after that, so Helen’s news touched me deeply. It was strange, I thought, how we were all only daughters, Helen and Evie and Agnes and myself. But now Helen’s life could be about to change completely. “You’ll have a real family now. That’s wonderful.”
Helen’s smile was like a wintry ghost. “Yes, of course.”
“So what’s wrong?” We had nearly reached the school.
“Oh, I don’t know, it’s so hard to explain. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but they are already a family—Tony and Rachel and the boys. They’re so happy with one another. They don’t need me. I know they tried hard to welcome me, make me feel at home. But that was just it, we were all trying to belong to one another and somehow, that made it worse. Tony is my father, but he’s actually a stranger. I don’t think I’ll ever fit in with them.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “I don’t think I’ll ever belong anywhere.”
“You belong with us,” I said firmly, “doesn’t she, Evie?” At that moment I vowed that I would look after them both, whatever happened. My heart was telling me that Evie was wrong. T
he Mystic Way hadn’t finished with us yet. The signs were all around us. My dreams, the sound of drums, a brief glimpse of a snarling face—this valley was still full of danger for me and my sisters. I had to forget Josh, I had to forget Cal and anything that wasn’t connected with our survival. “We all belong together,” I repeated. “We’re sisters. Remember?”
“Sisters,” whispered Evie, and Helen murmured, “Thank you, Sarah.”
From now on, I promised myself, I was only going to be what they needed me to be: strong, supportive, and calm, like the quiet hills. Every other secret longing and desire I would lock in an invisible box and bury out of sight.
I took my place next to Helen and Evie at the long wooden dining table. The vaulted, chilly room was filling up with girls. Although they were different ages and sizes, they all had the same Wyldcliffe uniform and the same superficial air of serene, privileged confidence. A few moments later a bell rang and the mistresses began to walk into the dining hall, wearing black academic gowns that made them look like a flock of crows. The students rose respectfully to their feet, all two hundred girls. Yet I thought it seemed that the dining room wasn’t quite as full as usual. I also realized that I couldn’t see Velvet anywhere, but before I had time to wonder where she was, Miss Scratton began to speak.
“It gives me great pleasure to welcome you back to Wyldcliffe as the new High Mistress of our school. The summer term is traditionally a happy time, and I intend to make it so for you this year, particularly after the sad events of last term. I also aim to maintain the high academic standards set by Mrs. Hartle, whose loss I am sure we all still feel.” Miss Scratton paused and looked shrewdly at the sea of faces in front of her, then continued. “At Wyldcliffe we are very aware of the past. Tradition has almost been our motto. As a historian, I am naturally in favor of valuing the lessons of the past. However, we must look to the future. In other words, we must modernize.”
A murmur of surprise ran around the room. It was as though she had said, “We must burn down the school.” A few of the teachers on the platform next to her looked sour with disapproval.
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