Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)(62)

And for reasons I didn’t understand, there were tears streaming down my cheeks. Ivy scrambled next to me on the bed and wrapped her arms around me. She hugged me tight as Alicia climbed onto my other side.

“I don’t know why I’m crying now.” I sniffed into Ivy’s shoulder. “I made it through the attack and talking to Headmistress Lockwood without blubbering all over myself. It’s silly. I’m fine!”

“You were frightened and now you know you’re safe,” Alicia told me. “You didn’t feel safe before.”

“Are you sure that Tom was dead?” Ivy said. “Necromancy is a magical skill that died off centuries ago, rightly so. It would take a considerable amount of power to do something like that and I don’t think anyone here would be powerful enough to do it.”

“I’m sure,” I told her. “I don’t know who could have raised him or why or if they sent him after me or if it was just a coincidence.”

“It’s probably something to do with the Mother Book,” Alicia said. “I hear people talking when they don’t realize I’m around. The girls repeat what they hear at home. Some of the more prominent families aren’t thrilled with an unknown girl from a minor house being named Translator. Maybe someone thinks that if they take you out of the equation, the Book will select another girl from one of their families.”

“You arrived at the conclusion rather quickly,” Ivy noted.

Alicia shrugged.

“Mr. Crenshaw didn’t seem pleased with my being chosen,” I said. “And he does have an owl on the top of his cane. Is it possible he could have some family connection to the Grimstelles?”

“It’s possible,” Ivy said. “But so many people do. The Grimstelles married into a lot of different houses and then disavowed their roots. It’s possible I have a family connection to the Grimstelles.”

Alicia’s lips lifted into a smirk.

“I don’t,” Ivy said, whacking Alicia with a pillow and knocking her over. “I’m just saying the owl cane doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He could just be an awful person who likes owls but not you. I think you would do better to focus on some of your enemies at the school.”

“I don’t have enemies,” I protested. Both girls raised their eyebrows this time. “I have people I disagree with on a philosophical level.”

Both girls were smirking now.

“Oh, stop it, both of you.”

The girls snickered and I flopped back on my bed. “What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to write to Mrs. Winter and keep her apprised of the situation. You’re going to get some rest here in your room. I’ll order a tray from the kitchens and we’ll eat a light supper and you will feel better,” Alicia said. “And we will think on this problem until we come up with a solution.”

“And we can camp out here in your room for the next few days while you recover, and help you study for exams,” Ivy said. “Your crystallography marks have improved, but you are still horrid with ward construction – my specialty. I can help you there. And Alicia needs help with her potions, where you seem to have gained some ground. See? We can all help each other.”

When Headmistress Lockwood arrived to check on me, she was not pleased about all three girls planning to miss classes for one girl’s “illness.” Ivy observed that if Headmistress Lockwood wouldn’t approve of the scheme, perhaps I would heal more quickly if she wrote a letter to her gossipy mother asking for a faster remedy for my bruising. It was the most underhanded, sneaky thing Ivy had ever done. I couldn’t help but feel rather proud of her. The girls slept on cots in my room in between sessions in Ivy’s rigorous study schedule. She’d built a careful web of study periods centered on our strong academic suits, so we could each help each other. And while they slept on their cots, I studied the Mother Book. Well, I stared at the Mother Book, a small crayfire lamp at my bedside casting a soft blue haze on the pages.

I read and re-read the page on Revenants, grateful that the spells used to make them were still untranslated, because I was not ready to know that. But, given the list of signs on the page – cold, clammy skin, inability to speak, insane strength, moving dead person – Tom had definitely been turned into a Revenant. Stabbing him with the birch branch had been the least violent treatment to release his body from the enchantment.

“Why did this happen to poor Tom?” I whispered to myself. “Who did that to him? What does it mean?”

The book’s pages turned to the now-familiar chart of House sigils. The top of the page glowed and rippled down to the minor houses, lingering on the Grimstelle owl. “All right then.”





15





Masquerade Bawl





I didn’t recognize myself.

This strange, beautiful creature standing in the Lavender Room’s full-length mirror could not be the creature so spindly just a few months ago that I couldn’t lift a vase without help.

Madame DuPont had outdone herself, making my costume for Mrs. Winter’s annual masquerade. The ball was the opening event to the month-long Yule social season, and invitations were fought over like small principalities.

I studied my reflection, trying my best not to preen. Surely, nice girls didn’t preen. My dress was tailored, to give me the illusion of a figure, with straps around my shoulders consisting of deep purple silk larkspur. The underskirts were a lovely blue with filmy purple overskirts, sewn to resemble dragonfly wings. Martha left my hair down, with the exception of complicated braids at the crown with larkspur woven into them. Combined with the silver filigree mask fashioned into dragonfly wings, I looked like a fairy queen.