To Best the Boys(15)
“She means well,” is all I say. Because I believe it’s probably true. Or maybe it’s just that my aunt believes it’s true—that everything she’s done has been because she meant well. It’s not her fault that most of the world can never be presentable enough to earn her and my uncle’s approval.
“I do try,” I’d told them once many years ago.
“Try and succeed are simply degrees between how badly one wants a thing,” was my uncle’s reply. “We can only provide profitable opportunities for you, child. It’s up to you what you make of them.”
Which is the same thing he said when he found out Da was pulling me out of classes to homeschool me. Just like my short-lived internship at Mr. Holder’s papery, my educational struggle wasn’t a matter of trying—it was due to my problem with the letters and numbers shifting places in my head. And even though the schoolteacher agreed that Da’s idea of repetitious science and documentation was precisely what was needed, and the two years since had brought about enormous progress, it didn’t matter to my uncle. He simply couldn’t understand.
Ahead of me, Seleni grabs a glass of mulled tea off a serving tray and offers it, which I down in five gulps as my stomach loudly reminds me I’ve not eaten all day. “Come on. I’ll introduce you around. There’s a host of Beryll’s friends I’m determined you’ll take an interest in. Oh, and some of Daddy’s famous political associates are here too,” she adds with a soft squeal.
“Did Beryll’s parents come?” I glance around for the politicians she referred to.
Seleni gives a sharp laugh in answer, then tucks her arm around mine.
“Well, they’re fools then. Because who wouldn’t want to spend time with you?”
“Exactly.” She sniffs, then pats my hand and leads me toward the group of her friends, a few of whom I recognize from past events.
They’re chatting in a circle beneath a vibrant mural of Caldon’s royal castle, wearing the same type of fancy outfits and hair grease as the people in the painting. I shyly eye the lace-draped girls perched beside impeccably dressed boys who are surrounded by a fog of cologne. If the parents’ preening looks being shot their way are any indicator, at least ten of the boys are going for the Holm scholarship.
“Hello there,” a girl in black ringlets and a stiff corset says. “I like your dress. The brown matches your eyes.”
I brace and wait for the sarcasm to follow, but it doesn’t. She just keeps smiling, and after a second I return the grin. “Thanks. I think the same of yours.”
“I’m Moly.”
“Rhen.”
“I know. Seleni’s told me about you.”
“Ah, there they are.” Beryll clears his throat and holds up a fresh-scrubbed face that gives no indication he was carousing with corpses a few hours ago. “Miss Lake, I was just informing our friends here how you two have never missed a single Labyrinth festivity.”
“Not a one. Even when I was deathly ill with fever.” Seleni jokingly swipes a hand across her forehead. “Mainly because I’ve made it my life’s work to discover the true identity of Mr. Holm.” She releases my arm and slips over to Beryll, where she takes his drink from his hand and sips it. Then nuzzles close to him in a way I recognize as her still feeling insecure about his parents.
“Ah, the elusive Holm. Man of mystery or murder? That is the question,” a tall boy to Seleni’s left says. I peer over at him and my nerves prick. The guy could probably grow a full beard to match his impeccable dark eyebrows if he wanted, but it’s his eyes that make him stand out. They’re cold. Detached.
Calculating.
I shiver and decide to avoid any dark corners near him.
“Definitely misery, Germaine. Haven’t you heard my brother talk about the contest from two years ago?”
We all cringe at jolly-faced Lawrence and the story he’s told both times I’ve seen him—about how his brother made it into the top three contestants and would’ve won if he’d remembered the correct equation for harmonic oscillation. But he didn’t and instead tried to steal an opponent’s place, and when he emerged shrieking from the Labyrinth, the only thing he’d say about it was that a ghoul had climbed inside his head and whispered, “Cheaters eventually meet their maker.”
He went on to attend a less expensive university and, from what Beryll’s said, has never been dishonest since, for fear his conscience will push him into insanity.
“Which is exactly why I find Holm creepy.” Eloise looks up primly from her spot at Lawrence’s arm. “My mum says he communes with the dead.”
“I’ve heard he isn’t real, but the invented persona of two Stemwick graduates,” a boy with a giant plate of cake informs us.
“Well I’ve heard he’s a death wizard.” Seleni drops her voice and slowly raises her hands to curl her fingers into claws while the light flickers through them. “He comes out at night on the eve of the autumnal equinox to drink the blood of his victims. And when he’s done? He paints his Labyrinth with the screams of their souls. It’s how his magic is reborn each year and how he keeps his Labyrinth beasts fed.”
I chuckle along with the group. Seleni made that story up one autumnal eve years ago, and we’ve scared each other and every child we can with it since.