Miss Mabel's School for Girls (20 page)

“Gingko biloba?”

“Was that a question?”

“No,” I said, more firmly this time, although my confidence wavered. “The answer is gingko biloba.”

She narrowed her eyes, but continued. “Wrong. Tell me the names of the first High Priestess and Priest to use the language Dekkon.”

I inwardly groaned. There had been too many names to keep track of who did what, but I did remember the pictures drawn and painted in the book. One in particular came to mind when I visualized the chapter. A painting at the beginning of the book with two people standing near a large throne. The High Priestess had black hair, reminding me of a woman named Viv. Although my guess could be wild, I threw it out anyway.

“Vivianne and Alexander.”

Miss Mabel stood in front of my desk now, towering over me like a marble goddess. She launched into the lesson, drawing a breath of relief from me.

“The Esbat is a meeting of neighboring covens, Council Leaders, the High Priest, and the High Priestess. They meet to conduct business. How many Council Members?”

“Ten.”

“Correct. Why is it so important to protect the Esbat meeting?”

This question was a summary of the entire textbook. “We discuss the needs of the Network at the meeting, which exposes our weaknesses.”

Miss Mabel stared at me, then took a step away from the desk. It was easier to breathe when she wasn’t looming over me.

“Yes, very good. It’s unfortunate that we don’t trust other Networks anymore. Once the mortals left centuries ago and we had no one to fight with, we naturally turned to hating each other. It hasn’t been very many years since our own Network wasn’t a very safe place to live. That was well before your time.”

Evelyn reigned over the Dark Days, only part of the reason Miss Mabel cursed my grandmother. Anarchy was the leader; hysteria the rule.

“I’ve heard of them before,” I said, realizing she expected me to say something.

Her smile seemed aggravated underneath her charm.

“Yes, I’m sure Hazel told you all about our darling High Priestess Mildred who swooped in and saved the Network from Evelyn. Let’s not talk about her. Let’s talk about potions.”

Her abrupt twist in conversation surprised me, but I welcomed it. Potions meant action, not words.

“You can read all the books you want, but knowledge means nothing without action.”

“Yes, Miss Mabel.”

Then why did I sit here all day reading a book?
I wanted to grumble, longing to feel the sun on my face.

“Tonight, I want to introduce you to a famous little gem that originated in the Western Network. They brought it over to our Network a few hundred years ago.”

Her shoes clicked as she walked towards me, producing a glass of water in her hands. “It’s important for you to know that simple truth potions are weak. Any attentive witch will know when they are influenced by one, and she can usually stop it through a few simple herbs. But not all truth potions are that easy.”

My gut twisted as I sensed her direction. She sauntered to the corner of the room where a small shelf ran along the wall, filled with glass vials topped by corks. Humming as she looked over them, Miss Mabel picked a skinny little vial with an emerald liquid inside. Her hair swayed along her shoulders when she stepped away.

“This is Veritas. Have you seen it before?”

Papa told me wild stories of the confessions that witches made under the influence of Veritas, for good and ill. He’d warned me away from it with religious devotion.

“No, Miss Mabel,” I cleared my throat. “I’ve never seen it before.”

 She tipped the vial upside down. The liquid clung to the walls of the glass, moving like clear green molasses.

“It’s difficult to make,” she said, studying it. “But easy to recognize. No other potion has this appealing shade of green. I’m quite fond of it. A single drop can extract superficial secrets from anyone. Two drops can reveal hidden information, and three will kill.”

She pulled the cork, and it came off with a light pop. Placing the glass on my desk, she put a single drop of Veritas in the water.

This was not good.

She swirled the glass until the Veritas disappeared without a trace, then looked at me.

“Have you ever taken Veritas?”

I shook my head.

“I drank it once,” she said, musing. “The Veritas dissolves clear, can survive in any liquid for an indefinite amount of time, tastes like mint, and burns going down. That’s how most people know they’ve drunk it. But by then, it’s too late. Most witches put it in wine, as it hides the aftertaste. I’m sure you’ve heard of
in vino veritas
? In wine there is truth.”

She lifted the glass of water up to look through it, and I held my breath. If she demanded that I drink it, I would have no choice but to obey. Refusing to take it would only make her suspicious, but what if I said something about Papa under its influence? It could be disastrous.

“Some people will tell you to never take wine from a witch you don’t know. I disagree. I never take wine from any witch. Ever.”

She opened her hand, and the glass fell, shattering into a hundred crystal specks on the floor. The water evaporated in a fine mist, curling off the planks and into the air like an early morning fog.

“Veritas leaves no trace. If you suspect a liquid is tainted with it, let a single drop fall. If the liquid touches the ground, there is no Veritas.”

As she headed for a bookshelf on the other side of the room, I breathed for what felt like the first time. The glass shards glittered and crunched on the floor as she strolled over them. 

“As a leader, witches from different Networks may try and use Veritas against you to get our secrets. That’s why we talk about it in the Esbat curriculum. Veritas is not allowed amongst the general public in our Network, thanks to our . . . annoyingly diligent High Priestess.”

The ironic tone of her voice was no accident. Miss Mabel waved her hand, beckoning several books.

“You will make the Veritas serum. Once you have finished brewing it, you’ll sample it in my presence so I can interrogate you. Everyone must sample Veritas once as part of the Esbat curriculum.” 

Any relief I felt at not drinking it tonight disappeared in a wall of anxiety. The books landed on the desk with a bang.

“These are some books to reference if you have questions.”

“Yes, Miss Mabel.”

Her sharp eyes narrowed in thought.

“You have three days to complete the potion, starting tomorrow morning. While it’s brewing, work on these.” She extended a thick roll of parchment. “Your homework questions are written in the Almorran language, so you’ll need to translate them in order to answer correctly. For now, you may answer in our language.” 

She left me standing with a hollow feeling in my gut and the sound of Miss Celia walking up the stairs with our dinner.

Continuing On

O
utside my new bedroom window, the woods gripped the darkness like a sponge, holding it in the naked trees.

This window was bigger than the last, with a ledge that jutted out and looked over the front of the school. I set a few little trinkets on it. A packet of lavender, a glass jar of my favorite peppermint salve, and a chipped mug from home. Mama’s favorite cup for hot tea. The ceiling sloped, leaving only the window and a short wall just high enough for my headboard. But everything else in the room remained the same, right down to the scrawny mattress and undecorated walls.

I sat on the edge of the bed, a half-finished plate of brown bread and gravy sitting on my desk. If I started the first brew on the Veritas tonight, I could get it out of the way and study while it simmered. My lip curled in distaste at the thought of facing all those scrolls.

I perused the old books with increasing annoyance. A rust-colored book with a slip of yellowing paper wedged into the spine called to me first. I pulled the bit of parchment out of the spine.

“Veritas,” I whispered the name of the potion. “Of course.”

The herb pantry sat between the library and Miss Scarlett’s classroom on the first floor, not far from the side entry. A sliver of light illuminated the bottom of Miss Mabel’s door when I stepped into the hall, and I was glad to leave the attic behind for awhile.

Camille’s faint voice came through her thick door. Before I knocked, I heard Leda say something, and then it went quiet.

The door opened with a velocity I didn’t think possible.

“Bianca!” Camille gasped, then threw herself into me with a hug that sent me backwards. “Are you doing okay? Is Miss Mabel nice? Do you like your new room? Can we come see you?”

“Camille, calm down,” Leda muttered, peeling her away. “Give her a second to breathe.”

I disentangled myself from Camille’s tight grip after she pulled me into her room. It felt like stepping into a messy bouquet of wildflowers. Clothing draped the back of the chair and headboard. Books cluttered the floor and built in shelves. The air smelled sweet. Too sweet.

A light blue quilt, decorated with a pink pillow and a stuffed teddy bear, stretched across her meager bed. A black and white drawing of two people sat on her window ledge. The shape of the man’s face looked like Camille’s. Her parents. They seemed very young in the picture.

“It’s all right,” I said while Camille shut the door behind me. “It’s nice to know I’ve been missed.”

“How are things?” Leda asked with her usual lack of preamble. “Miss Mabel seemed as horrifying as I expected.”

“Yes,” Camille agreed. “There’s something a bit . . . creepy about her.”

Creepy, or evil.

“But she’s breathtaking. Those lips!” Camille squealed, falling back on her bed with a flop. “I’d die for lips like that.”

“What happened?” Leda asked, astute as ever. “You’re stressed.”

I sat on the edge of the bed next to Leda and recounted everything, grateful to share the experience with them. Camille pushed up onto her elbows and listened, sprawled across the bed, her white stockings discarded into a corner of the room and toes wiggling free.

“She’s a conniving witch,” Leda muttered. “I knew it the moment I realized she cast the curse on your family. There’s something not right about her.”

Camille agreed with a low hum. “You better watch yourself, Bianca.”

“Watch her is more like it,” I muttered.

“It’s very sad that she’s so beautiful and so ugly at the same time,” Camille said. “A little bit like Priscilla, isn’t she?”

“A little bit too beautiful, I think,” Leda said, her eyes landing on me. “Miss Mabel has been running the school for over forty years now. She must use some kind of transformative magic to look that way. She should be much older.”

The thought made my skin crawl. I had the feeling that seeing the real Miss Mabel would be a horrifying experience and wondered what kind of festering soul hid under all that false perfection.

“Yes,” I said feeling a little sheepish that I hadn’t thought of it first. “She should.”

“A lot of powerful witches do that to conceal their true age,” Camille said, tugging on her hair and inspecting a wayward curl. “There was a witch in our village named Balinda that didn’t look much over thirty, but she was well over ninety years old. I plan to do that. I want to die looking the way I do at twenty-five. Unless I look better at thirty, which is doubtful, considering how, uh, old my aunts seem.”

“Balinda was also out of her mind,” Leda said. “So how she managed to use transformative magic every day, I have no idea. The woman talked to her onions and thought her cat was a mule.”

“Speaking of transformation,” I drawled, a sudden thought coming to me. “How did Priscilla react when I won? Did she say anything?”

“Oh, she was pretty upset,” Camille said in a prim tone, her lips pressed together in a poor attempt to hide a smile. “She, um, well–”

“First of all, she had been hiding in the kitchen the whole time. Then she threw a fit as soon as Miss Mabel left.” Leda supplied the information with the droll tone that meant she enjoyed talking about it. “Miss Scarlett had to escort her into the hallway. I somehow found myself near the doors at the time and heard Miss Scarlett telling her to pull it together.”

Camille laughed, falling backwards onto the bed again, her arms thrown wide.

“She started to cry. It was wonderful, Bianca!”

The three of us dissolved into laughter, forcing away the dark cobwebs I’d already collected in the recesses of the attic. 

“Jade and Stephany didn’t come back to the dinner either,” Camille said. “They sat up in Priscilla’s room with her, pouting. Miss Celia wouldn’t let anyone take them food, even though they tried to get some first-years to knick them some. No one would do it. Miss Scarlett said that Priscilla, Jade, and Stephany were poor shows of sportsmanship and gave them six hours of kitchen duty.”

Our mad fit of giggling continued as we discussed how Priscilla would look with flour in her red hair, Michelle ordering her around. Soon, the mirth subsided, leaving us clutching our stomachs.