Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(57)
Brandywine House Sigil
Owen frowned at me while he rubbed his sore shin. “I’m sure she is, it’s just that she’s always so shy. And with her pallor, it’s like watching a wraith moving through a crowd, sipping tea. It’s unnerving.”
“Ivy said she’d always been unwell. I thought you Guardians had Healers for sickly dispositions.”
He frowned, shaking his head. “She’s an unusual case in that she has survived as long as she has. Reverb patients rarely make it past their twelfth birthdays. I imagine it’s only the wealth and resources of the McCrays that have sustained her so far.”
“That poor girl.”
“Indeed. She could use a friend like you.”
“A friend like me?”
“Someone who will understand what it’s like to be unusual, to be weak.”
“But I’m not weak anymore,” I reminded him, making him grin at me.
“No, you’re not, and with any luck, one day Alicia won’t be, either.”
I smiled, nudging him with my elbow. “That’s very sentimental of you.”
“Nonsense. I just want her do-gooder brother to stop moping about the school, being all broody and noble about the sacrifices he makes to care for his sister.”
“There’s the Owen I know and… I don’t like very much to be honest.”
The heretofore unknown flinty tone in my voice made Owen smile for some perverse reason. “I don’t remember you being this prissy before.”
Despite myself, I snickered. “It’s the gowns. They’ve crushed the humor right out of me. No wonder all your Guild women are so cranky.”
“Just wait until you have to wear the full ladies’ get-up, you’ll be positively insane with rage.”
“You really are just horrible, aren’t you?”
“And proud of it,” he said, beaming and yanking on one of my curls. I growled and kicked him in the shin. He gasped in mock offense and yanked a different curl.
“Children.” Mrs. Winter’s voice floated, smooth and cool, over the expanse of lawn. “If you are quite finished, dinner will be served in an hour.”
The pair of us straightened immediately, hands behind our backs, stifling our chuckles as we tried to appear the image of proper Guardian innocence. “Yes, ma’am.”
“We’ll be right in, Mother,” Owen assured her. Mrs. Winter nodded, though there was a small worrisome line creasing her brows. The moment she disappeared back into the house, we burst out laughing, with Owen knocking my ankle with his boot and me bumping his hip with the cumbersome bustle on my gown. But rather than letting me stumble, he kept his hand at my elbow, keeping me upright as we struggled our way to the door like two squabbling children.
In the jostle, I glanced up at a bedroom window on the second floor. And I saw Mary, staring down at us with contempt so bright and hot, that I was surprised the window glass didn’t melt. I stopped in my tracks, my laughter dying on my lips as I tried to find some way to tell Mary that I was sorry, that we were only letting off steam from a stressful day, that Owen didn’t think of me that way. Owen was my friend, just a friend, someone who was helping me find my way in this confusing new life I was living.
Owen stopped when he realized I wasn’t following him into the house. He turned, a concerned expression crinkling his mouth. “Cassandra?”
“I’m just waiting for Phillip,” I said, smiling absently as I held out my hand for my familiar. The little bird chirped brightly, swooping up from the bench to take his rightful place on my finger.
I glanced up. Mary shut the curtains with a snap, shutting out the pointless apologies I couldn’t even make from this distance.
14
Deadly Serious
Back at school, more and more pages of the Mother Book were translating themselves. It seemed that asking the Mother Book to come out of “hiding” had opened a channel of communication between us. Information on potions to recuperate after a long illness, a spell to clean water that has been fouled, and oddly, the most effective method of banishing a malevolent spirit into the beyond. I wrote letters, charmed only to be read by a member of the Winter household, detailing what I’d learned for Mrs. Winter. It seemed the best way to report my Translations to… whomever was supposed to supervise me, who wasn’t Mr. Crenshaw.
Calepernia McCray’s journal had no information to offer about Revenants. She did state that were some things that she learned from the book that she never shared with others, that there was some knowledge that was too dangerous to share, or too frightening. I believed it was reasonable to list walking corpses under “too dangerous” and “too frightening.”
I spent hours in the library looking for any information on revenants, but the card codex produced nothing on revenants, the walking dead, necromancy, or the Grimstelles. Apparently, gently bred young ladies did not need to learn about animating the living dead.
Miss Morton couldn’t have been more pleased, both with my long hours in her library and my throwing myself in Translating. She pushed me to spend every spare moment with the book, even when the late nights left me tired and listless in class. She said it was important, to the magical community that I learned as much as I could from the book. After all, there hadn’t been a Translator in more than one hundred forty years.