“Can I braid your hair?” she asked Scarlett. “It’s so pretty and shiny.”
“Absolutely not,” Scarlett replied. Vaughn couldn’t blame her.
Karlee tried Orchid. “How about you?”
Orchid also looked skeptical. “Um, it’s pretty short.”
“Karlee can handle short,” chirped Kaylee from the rug.
“I don’t think—” she tried again.
“Come on, please!” Karlee whined. “I’m so bored!”
Vaughn knew the look on Orchid’s face. The one that said it was easier to relent than keep fighting. He wore it often.
Karlee got to work. “Oh, I hadn’t realized you colored your hair.”
“You color your hair?” Scarlett asked from the couch, incredulous. “That color?”
Orchid’s lips pursed, but she said nothing, only yelped a bit as Karlee tugged on another strand. “It didn’t turn out the way I’d wanted. Kind of muddy, I guess. I got it out of a box.”
Karlee clucked her tongue. “Going brown can be tricky.”
“You know,” said Kayla, “you’d look really good as a redhead.”
She would. Orchid’s skin was pale, and the fire had heightened the color on her cheeks. A girl this pretty in his history class should probably be someone he’d noticed before now.
He just wasn’t always his best self lately.
Vaughn looked away. At the table in the corner, Rusty and the new kid were talking sandbag strategy. Better this Mustard character than him, was all he could think.
“Next time you want to color your hair,” Karlee was saying as she tortured every lock on Orchid’s head, “you come to me.”
“Um . . .” said Orchid, looking scared.
“Peacock did for those blue tips,” Karlee said. “And don’t they look great?”
Beth Peacock was no longer in the lounge, and couldn’t weigh in on whether or not she liked her dyed blue tips. The tennis star had been mostly quiet throughout dinner, and when they’d all come in here, she’d claimed her mug of hot chocolate and vanished.
“Wow,” said Kayla, who was watching the progress with Orchid’s hair. “You have amazing cheekbones. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Not recently,” said Orchid, wincing a bit as Karlee tugged the hair at her temples.
“Well, how could they with your hair in your face all the time!” Kayla reached up and pulled off Orchid’s glasses. “Ooh, can I do your makeup next?”
Orchid reached for the glasses. Her eyes were kind of a ridiculous blue. Vaughn had noticed that earlier. “Please give those back.”
“Oh, you’re already wearing makeup,” Kayla said to Orchid. “Girl, your contouring is all wrong. You’re supposed to enhance your features, not hide them.”
Orchid snatched back the glasses, blushing furiously. “We’re done here.”
“Geez,” said Kayla. “We were only trying to help.”
Orchid’s half-finished braid tumbled down around her face as she scooted well out of the range of Karlee and Kayla’s impromptu salon and over to Vaughn’s side of the fire.
She plopped down beside him. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he replied, pleasantly surprised. He just hoped she wouldn’t want to talk about their history class.
“Hey,” said Scarlett to Finn. “Do you think we’d get cell service? You know, if we could use a battery charger or something?”
“Not likely,” Finn said. “Especially not a high-speed connection. That’s ultra-high frequency, which is more affected by water in the atmosphere . . .”
Scarlett sighed. “What about satellite?”
“Satellites are above the clouds. Sorry, Scar.” Finn patted her knee. “You are officially unplugged.”
“I’m bored, is what I am,” she whined. “Do we have any games or anything here?”
“There’s billiards,” said the transfer student, who insisted everyone call him Mustard. “As long as Finn doesn’t mind everyone tromping through our bedrolls.”
Finn looked appalled by the suggestion. “Aren’t there board games or something in the library?”
“I can go check,” Vaughn found himself saying.
“I can go with you,” Orchid broke in. It was half suggestion, half plea. “I know where they are.”
They exited into the dark hall, whose soaring ceilings and grand marble staircase formed an excellent acoustic backdrop for the roar of the wind beyond the mansion’s walls. It should have been terrifying, but Vaughn felt safer tonight than he had in months.
“So, you’ve been assigned to the library tonight?” Orchid asked.
“At least.” Maybe the storm would last for a while, and Vaughn wouldn’t have to go home for days. They arrived at the door of the library. Beyond lay dark shelves crammed with dusty books. “You said you knew where the games were kept?”
She gave a little half laugh. “Um . . . Well, I think there might be an old Monopoly set in here . . . somewhere. I mostly didn’t want Karlee’s makeover.”
“I take it you don’t play a lot of board games.”
“With Scarlett?” she scoffed. “She’d play for blood.” She swept the beam of her flashlight over the shelves, looking for any games.
“You know, I always picture the residential students sitting around here at night, playing games and singing songs . . .”
“Like a scout troop?”
Okay, it sounded cheesy when she put it like that. “Come on. Don’t wreck all my illusions at once.”
“Sorry, dude. I don’t think anyone has sat around the lounge singing songs since I’ve lived in this house.”
Vaughn considered this. Maybe it was the soup, or the storm, but he was feeling impulsive tonight. He usually didn’t have the option of being impulsive. School and custodial shifts and studying and traveling back and forth between the campus and home—everything had to adhere to the schedule, or it wouldn’t work at all. “Maybe now’s the time.”
He left the library and headed farther down the hall, into the ballroom at the back of Tudor House. The cavernous room was occasionally used for exams or student assemblies, and, more often than either—for band practice. He peered into its dim recesses.
“Aha.” An acoustic guitar leaned against the chair rail.
“You play?” Orchid asked as he retrieved it.
“Yeah.” He pulled the strap over his chest. “When I have the chance.”
Back in the lounge, only Mrs. White looked up when they returned. Kayla was now attempting to braid Karlee’s hair. It wasn’t going well.
“Didn’t have much luck with games,” said Orchid brightly, “but Vaughn’s promised to play for us.”
“Oh, goody,” mumbled Scarlett.
“What a lovely idea,” said Mrs. White. “Thank you, Vaughn. It’ll be like old times.”
He sat down and began to tune the instrument. “Mrs. White, will you sing for us?”
“You can sing?” Orchid asked her.
“Vaughn’s telling tales.”
He chuckled and bent over the instrument, feeling out a melody.
“Oh, come on, Mrs. White,” coaxed Scarlett. “If you have a hidden talent, we want to hear it.”
Mrs. White shrugged one bony shoulder. “I can’t sing any of your new songs.”
Vaughn thought about the times he’d heard Mrs. White singing. Nursery rhymes, mostly, and old folk songs. There were times, when he’d been young and his parents had been home from tours, that her voice would echo up and down the ravine along with Gemma’s. “I won’t play a new one, then.” His fingers began to work out the chords of an old English folk tune. “Here’s one for this cold, haily, windy night.”
He began to sing. His voice would never compete with the trained efforts of some of his heavily coached classmates in the music department. There was only so much you could do practicing at home, and his parents had never had the opportunity to teach him. But he knew he could hold his own, and at least he could be sure his playing was seco
nd to none.
By the second verse, Mrs. White chimed in, her voice as strong and clear as ever.
“Let me in,” the soldier cried,
Cold, haily, windy night.
“Oh, let me in,” the soldier cried,
“For I’ll not go back again, no.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
Like always, he got lost in the tune, in the heartbreaking story of deception and betrayal. Around him, the conversations dimmed, or maybe they had ceased entirely. By the second repeat of the chorus, Vaughn had even gotten Rusty, Orchid, Karlee, and Kayla to join in. But then the verses took a turn for the risqué, because after the poor girl did let that freezing soldier in her house, he had some pretty interesting ideas on how to get warm.
Headmaster Boddy clapped his hands. “Okay, okay, that’s enough.”
Vaughn’s fingers fumbled over the strings. “But, sir, it’s a folk song. We studied it in music history this term.”
“Did you?” The headmaster looked genuinely baffled. Blackbrook teachers got to design their own courses, and the humanities teachers had more latitude than most, as the administration didn’t keep careful watch over anything that wasn’t science.
“It’s a night visiting song,” Vaughn explained. “That’s the whole point of the genre. The man comes in, seduces the woman, and abandons her to ruin.”
“Well!” he replied. “I guess if it’s schoolwork . . .”
“It’s incredibly sexist,” Scarlett pointed out.
“No different than everything we study in English,” Orchid pointed out. “Documenting how sexist society is.”
“You mean how sexist it was?” Mustard asked. “Sexism is basically over.”
Every woman in the room stared at him in shock.
“Did they keep you in a box in your old school?” Scarlett asked, appalled.
“Easy there,” said Finn to his friend.
Orchid glanced at Vaughn. “I was listening. The girl and the guy spent the night together, but it only ruined one of their lives. Hers. Sounds familiar to me. Boys never get in trouble for things like that.”
“No,” said Mrs. White, and sipped her cocoa.
Mustard was staring down at his hands, saying nothing.
Headmaster Boddy cleared his throat. “Perhaps this is a good time to go over the rules for our current circumstances. The regular dorm policies apply, despite the unusual circumstances. No closed doors in mixed company, and no inappropriate activities. Mrs. White and I have purposefully stationed ourselves in the study and the lounge because they are the rooms at the foot of the stairs. Boys on the first floor, girls on the second. No one will be going up or down without our knowledge.”
The students exchanged amused glances. They all knew the strict codes of conduct when it came to co-ed relations at Blackbrook. They also all knew exactly how many students broke those rules.
“And I think maybe no songs about seductions on cold winter nights, Mr. Green.” Headmaster Boddy gave him a knowing glance. Beside him, Orchid smiled and played with the tassels at the edge of the carpet.
“I think maybe give us a little credit,” he blurted. “I could have easily picked a murder ballad, and it doesn’t mean someone’s going to get killed tonight, either.”
Just then, there was a horrible crash right outside the door, and suddenly the sound of the storm got a whole lot louder.
8
Scarlett
It was a horrible jumble, all of them trying at once to get to the door. Mrs. White managed it first, and flinging it wide, revealed utter chaos beyond.
The large stained-glass window over the transom had shattered, and in the firelight spilling out from the lounge, the floor of the hall glittered with a mix of glass, ice, and freezing rain. Wind roared through the hole above the front door, bringing water and wet leaves.
“What was it?” Boddy asked from somewhere in the crush.
“Out of my way!” Rusty pushed through all of them. “Tree branch,” he reported, shining his flashlight on the offending piece of wood. “Looks to be from the maple out front.”
“Will we lose any more?” Boddy asked as they spilled through the bottleneck into the hall.
“The Lily Window,” Mrs. White wailed. She leaned against the hallway wall and looked at the destruction with her hand pressed to her chest.
“It’s okay,” said Scarlett, touching her proctor’s shoulder. “They can fix it.”
Maybe. Or maybe it was a priceless piece of history. The stained-glass window had been original to Tudor House, well before its reform school days, when the resident heiress and her glamorous furnishings matched the luxe wood paneling and rich details. Dorm room beds and couches subjected to decades of students’ butts weren’t quite the same.
Mrs. White did not appear remotely comforted, and Scarlett couldn’t blame her. The old woman reached down and picked up a long shard of beautifully painted amber glass. “The Lily Window,” she said again, forlorn.
The window had depicted a field of bright orange tiger lilies and had been one of the most glamorous reminders of how gorgeous the mansion must once have been. Scarlett herself had taken many photos bathed in the kaleidoscope of light that shone through it on sunny afternoons.
Now it lay in ruins on the floor.
They’d been such good pictures, too. She’d gotten loads of comments from people about what kind of lighting she’d used, and even some detractors who insisted her shots must be some kind of professional trickery, as the tiger lilies made her brown skin shine like gold.
Now what was she supposed to do?
Scarlett carefully picked her way over the shattered bits of colored glass. What a shame. Just then, she remembered that her room upstairs faced the same direction—and the same tree—as the Lily Window. If her window had broken, too, her stuff could be blowing away in the storm right this very minute!
“I need to close my shutters,” she said at once.
“You haven’t closed your shutters?” Vaughn asked. He had somehow already found a broom and had started to sweep up bits of glass.
“No!” she snapped at him. “I thought that was the janitor’s job.” And with that, she turned on her heel and headed up the stairs.
She found Peacock lurking at the top of the landing.
“Where have you been?” Scarlett asked. She hadn’t seen Peacock since Mrs. White and Headmaster Boddy had shown up in the lounge with the hot cocoa. Scarlett couldn’t blame her. Sitting alone in the cold and the dark was probably preferable to whatever had been going on downstairs. Though, if someone held a gun to her head, Scarlett would be forced to admit that the townie was halfway decent with that guitar. Certainly as good as some of the people she’d seen online, even those with bigger followings than she had. Of course, they also had better fashion sense than Vaughn Green. Packaging was such an art.
“I was working out,” Peacock replied, though she didn’t seem to have even broken a sweat. Guess that was what happened when you were at peak physical condition like Peacock was. Now, there was a girl who knew how to package herself! “What was that noise?”
“Tree branch through the window,” said Scarlett.
“What?!” Peacock craned her neck down the stairs, but looked in no hurry to join the group in cleanup.
“I want to make sure my shutters are closed, in case we lose any more branches.”
“You haven’t closed your shutters?” Peacock asked.
Scarlett did not deign to answer that as she hurried into her bedroom and shut the door behind her.
Sweet silence. And darkness. She turned on the battery-powered lantern Rusty had assigned her. Her computer, camera, and recording equipment lay like so many cold, useless bricks on her desk. Her window, fortunately, was still intact. She crossed to it and looked out, but saw little other than snowdrifts, rain, and the dark shadows of tree branches beyond the glass. The storm was still pretty strong, to judge by the waving branches. More might fall before the night was throu
gh.
The window screeched in protest as she opened it, and papers ruffled all over her room. Wet wind assaulted her from the outside, and she shivered, scrabbling at the clasps holding the shutters in place. They may not have been moved for years.
Scarlett soon found herself leaning halfway out the window, trying to figure out how to get the shutters closed. If she killed herself trying to close these darn things, she was going to be super annoyed.
Over the storm, she heard a knock at the door.
“Scarlett?” Finn. Thank goodness.
She hauled her body back inside, then ran and opened the door for him.
He grinned, his hair flopping over his eye in that way he knew drove the girls crazy. “So much for Boddy watching the stairs, huh?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Give me a hand, will you? I’m trying to close the shutters.”
“You haven’t closed your shutters?”
“Ugh!” Scarlett yanked him inside. She didn’t need a lecture from Finn, too.
Together, they managed to coax movement out of the rusty shutter hinges, then close and secure them from the inside. Scarlett slammed the window closed, and they flopped down onto her bed, side by side.
Scarlett looked down at her silk pajama shirt, which was now streaked with rain and who knew what else. “This had better come out.”
“At least you have your own clothes. I’m stuck in these until my stuff dries.” Finn held out his arms, revealing the frayed, turned-up cuffs and waffle pattern of a khaki-colored shirt she did not recognize from his wardrobe. Finn tended toward the super-preppy end of the sartorial spectrum. He was the only boy Scarlett knew who could actually make a cardigan look good.
“Whose rags are those?” she asked.
“The new kid. What’s his deal, anyway?” Finn knew that Scarlett could be counted on to get the goods on any new student at Blackbrook.
“I haven’t had a chance to figure it out yet. He started right before I went home for Diwali, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
“Transferred from some military school out west, though he’s kind of cagey about the reason he left. Doesn’t seem like a threat.” He wasn’t taking a single honors class, according to Scarlett’s intel from Boddy prior to Mustard’s orientation meeting. That reminded her. “Hey, you never told me what Boddy wanted you for the other day.”
In the Hall with the Knife Page 5
