Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(34)

“I’m sorry, Miss Morton,” I’d murmured through pursed lips.

“Do try to be more careful, dear,” Miss Morton sighed, before returning to her spot at the reference desk.

“So, why won’t it work?” I asked the smaller girl, who’d popped back up from behind the bookshelf like a little jack-in-the-box. Honestly, this girl was so petite, that she made me look like a lumbering giant.

“It won’t work, because the book has shown you what it thinks you need to see for now,” she said. “When you’re ready to see more, it will reveal more. For now, you should keep learning everything else you can until you’re ready to see.”

“That is very helpful, but at the same time, exhausting.”

“Being the Translator is often a thankless task,” she said, her tone wiser than it should have been at such a young age.

“I’m beginning to understand that,” I’d said, turning to slide Wit back into my sleeve holster. “What’s your name?”

But by the time I turned around, my small advisor had disappeared. Again. I searched the stacks on the study level, but couldn’t find her anywhere. Miss Morton claimed not to have seen any other girl in the library at the time I’d been studying. Had I just been instructed by a ghost? Was Miss Castwell’s haunted? Surely, ghosts had better things to do than hang about in the library, teasing students with unhelpful hints.

I didn’t see the girl in any of my classes, either. Or seated at the younger girls’ tables at meals. Those times were particularly difficult, because I did see Ivy sitting at one of the central tables by herself, while I sat there with Callista, pretending to listen to her endless stories of shopping trips with her mother, of her flirtations with the highest-flying scions of Guardian society.

I tried focus on my own safety, afforded by keeping a relatively low profile at the school and being a member of Callista’s clique. I tried to think of my family at home, and my need to protect them. I even tried thinking about the Winters and how I didn’t want to repay their trust and effort with losing my composure in a public manner (most likely in the dining hall with a large shrimp fork) and exposing us all. While my first week at school had been relatively easy, I was becoming tired of “easy,” if it meant feeling this way.





9





The Strange and the Familiar





One afternoon, Headmistress Lockwood arrived just as my remedial symbology class was ending to inform me I was excused from independent study as I had a visitor. She led me to the entryway, where I found Owen Winter, examining the portraits of the school’s foreboding founder, Emmeline Castwell. He held his hat in one hand and a prettily wrapped round box in the other, both behind his back. Fortunately, the lobby was empty of other students, so this incident would rate very low on the dinner gossip scale.

I tried not to let my confusion show on my face as he turned to greet us. I curtsied and held my hands out to accept the gift box. In doing so, my hands were outstretched, pinkies touching. Now that he could see my mark, in full light, for the first time, Owen’s eyes went wide with alarm and something akin to respect.

There, I thought, let the boy who called it a ridiculous and embarrassing idea to send me to school stew in that for a while.

“Cousin! How are you? Faring well here in your new home? Mother didn’t want you to know that she was worried – you know how she hates to be seen as a hoverer – so I told her I would come and see for myself that you’re settling in.”

“Your mother?” Headmistress Lockwood said, lifting a dark brow. “Hovering? I can’t imagine.”

“She is the most doting and loving of mothers,” Owen assured her.

“Miss Reed, you may take your guest to the gardens for thirty minutes and then escort him directly to his carriage. There’s no reason to cause distraction by bringing him back into the building.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Headmistress Lockwood gave Owen one last knowing look before turning on her heel and walking toward her office. Owen turned his gaze back to Miss Castwell’s portrait. “So is there some sort of requirement that to be the headmistress of this school, you must have your sense of humor removed?”

I shushed him. “Please don’t get me in trouble.”

“Oh, dearest Cassie, I mean to do no such thing,” he assured me as we walked out a side exit to the gardens. “I only meant to bring you my mother’s love and this package.”

He tossed the purple box at me, which I caught, much to my surprise. I waited for us to be far from the school building, past the flower beds and the gazebo, even the small reflecting pond. I smiled at Tom, the groundskeeper, as he passed by. He was a sturdy sort of boy, who kept his distance while he cheerfully did his work. Like my father, he whistled old Irish tunes while he raked, which endeared him to me. I didn’t speak to him. We girls were discouraged from being at all familiar with any male staff members at Miss Castwell’s. Headmistress Lockwood said it caused “unpleasant confusion.” Owen wasn’t confused at all. He barely looked at Tom as we sat on an ivy-wreathed bench near the treeline.

“Do you practice being awful or does this come naturally?” I asked him.

“It’s a talent,” he said, preening, even as he flopped onto the granite bench. He paused to take his own dagger, Sapientem, from the holster he kept at his hip. He drew the rune for “silence” in the air and a shower of blue sparks arced up from the tip, forming a sort of dome around us before fizzling away. “Now, we don’t have to worry about being overheard. So, how is mother’s little political pawn this afternoon? No trouble tricking every girl from every Guardian family in Lightbourne, I hope?”