The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (18 page)

He laughed and said, “Honestly? After I got here and learned about the dorms and the different Sorcerous Arts, I wanted to join Dee, too. The folks in Drake are a bit pompous for me. But there are good people in the mix.”

She felt as if she had met the other half of her soul. The feeling was so intense that she could not bear to look directly at him. She turned her back on him and whistled. Her blast of wind knocked the book from the table. It fluttered in mid-air and hit the ground with a loud
thump
.

“Very good!” He sounded sincerely impressed. “You’ve improved a lot in two days.”

Rachel went pink with delight.

Over her shoulder, she asked teasingly, “So, why are you in Drake rather than Dee? Because of your devil-may-care, rebel-who-plays-by-his-own-rules attitude?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe because I don’t care about the pursuit of knowledge as much as other things: family, friends, me…The list is rather long.”

She looked again at the patches on his robes. Why did he stay in Drake if he found his dorm mates pompous? Was it because of the few good people?

“Glad to hear your friend the princess is better,” he said. “What happened to her?”

“She…” Rachel hesitated, biting her lip.

This also was a secret, but not her secret. And yet, he had told her something truly important, at least that was the impression she had received from her father’s letter. The secret about Dee Hall mattered to her but to no one else. Maybe she owed him more.

“If I tell you, will you keep it to yourself?” she asked seriously.

He considered for a bit and then nodded. Rachel moved to stand right beside him and spoke very softly. He leaned toward her until their heads were very close. He smelled good.

“Sometimes, when the princess touches people,” Rachel whispered, “she finds herself in a different landscape. A real landscape, because she brought something back once. Each time it’s different, and she doesn’t know what it means. Anyway, a girl named Xandra…”

“Cassandra Black? The seeress?”

“I guess. Xandra Black came and told her in this eerie voice not to touch Joshua March. But Nastasia did not trust the voice, so she touched Mr. March anyway. And she fell over.”

“I…see.” He straightened and stood with his head titled back slightly, his hands clasped behind him. Rocking on the balls of his feet, he contemplated what she had told him. “By March, you mean the Grand Inquisitor’s son?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” he said again. “These landscapes she sees, can you tell me anything about them?”

Rachel shook her head. She did not yet know what was important and what was not. She felt she should not say too much. “Only that they were mostly bad places. Except for where Lucky came from.”

“Hmm.” He murmured almost to himself, “I wonder what she’d see for me.”

He thought a while longer. Rachel went back to lifting and dropping the book.

After a time, Gaius said slowly, “You’re friends with that Valerie Hunt girl, aren’t you? The one who was attacked?”

Rachel was in the midst of carefully lifting the book. She nodded without turning around.

“I saw her yesterday talking to Jonah Strega,” said Gaius. “He’s…he’s a rather scary person—even to guys like me. You might warn her to stay away from him.”

“She’s interviewing people to write a piece for the paper,” Rachel repeated Valerie’s cover story. She decided not to mention Valerie was investigating her own attempted murder.

He shrugged. “Just figured you might want to know.”

“Thanks.” She smiled.

When he spoke again, Gaius’s voice had more of a lilt to it, a familiar lilt. “Well, that’s all the time I have, my love. I’m off.”

Rachel stood there, the heat slowly rising in her cheeks. Her eyes bore into the back of the older boy as he sauntered away.

My love?

Oh. She knew she had recognized that lilt. He was from England’s West Country. In Cornwall, everyone—men, women, and children—called everyone else “my love.” Still, it almost sounded as if he had meant it in a completely different way.

It was a long time before her cheeks were no longer hot enough to fry an egg.

Rachel arrived at the lunch table with her tray. Siggy and Valerie were sitting close together, poring over Valerie’s findings. The intrepid reporter girl had clipped photos of the people she had interviewed to the brightly-colored folders in which she kept her research. Rachel recognized several students—all children whose parents worked for the Parliament of the Wise.

As Rachel approached, she noticed that Sigfried’s arm was slowly sneaking around the back of Valerie’s chair. Her mystic girl powers tingled. Siggy
liked
Valerie. She approved of his taste. Grinning, she sat down, but not so near as to distract them.

Zoë joined them, as did Kitten, Brunhilda, Wendy, Zoë’s friend Seth Peregrine, and Siggy’s roommates—Ian MacDannan and Enoch Smithwyck, the British boy with the Japanese accent. Zoë launched into a dramatic description of what the Science tutor had told them about the Terrible Five and the Six Musketeers. The others listened with interest.

Siggy leaned forward. “Did you tell them how Mr. Fisher defeated that guy who could kill people. Kobe the Deathless?”

“Koschei,” Zoë murmured dryly. “Koschei the Deathless. He was Russian.”

“Coat-tie…whatever.” Siggy waved his hand. “That’s not the point. The point is that this James Darling guy gets all the credit, because there are comics about him, when Mr. Fisher actually did all the work. He’s the real hero.”

“That’s not true!” Wendy Darling cried, hotly defending her father. Her cloud of chestnut hair floated around her, emphasizing her piercing blue eyes.

“Sure it is!” Siggy cried. “He dueled the Deathless guy. That was cool! What did Darling do? Stab some guy with a knife Mr. Fisher made. Mr. Fisher should be the star of the comic! Darling’s a glory hound, taking credit for another man’s accomplishments. He should be ashamed!”

Wendy did not answer, but her face had turned rather splotchy. She stabbed at her baked potato with her fork.

“Hi, guys.” Joy O’Keefe tentatively approached the table with her tray. She looked rather sweet in her subfusc outfit, except one of her twin velvet ribbons had fallen into her food and left a ketchup stain on her white shirt. “Whatcha talking about? Can I join in?”

“Sure.” Siggy flashed her his blinding grin. He moved over to make room for her, stuffing two sausages and some cookies into his pocket. “The more the merrier.”

Joy pulled out her chair and put her tray on the table, but she remained standing, captivated by his cuteness. Reaching up, Zoë pushed on her shoulder. Joy dropped into her chair. Rachel’s mystic girl powers tingled again. Joy
liked
Sigfried.

Looking up from where he was drumming on his upside-down salad bowl with twin knives, Seth Peregrine said, “As the resident comic geek, I feel compelled to point out that the comics aren’t about fighting the Veltdammerung. It’s about Darling’s life as an Agent, after he graduated—fighting rogue sorcerers and banshee gone bad. That kind of thing.”

Rachel rested her cheek upon her palm. “My father appears in
James Darling, Agent
. The character Merlin Thunderhawk is based on him. You know: Ambrose Griffin—Merlin Thunderhawk?”

“No, really?” Zoë had been toying with her long braided forelock. She pointed the feather at Rachel. “The tall guy who sneaks up on people, appearing and vanishing like Batman?”

Rachel was not certain who Batman was, but appearing and disappearing sounded like Merlin Thunderhawk. She nodded.

“Awesome!” Zoë and Seth grinned and high-fived each other. Apparently, they had been friends before coming to school.

Rachel turned to Joy, who still stared at Sigfried. “So, you have six older sisters. Do you have any brothers?”

“Huh?” Joy started, breaking free of the spell cast by Sigfried’s good looks. “No, just sisters.”

“I’m the youngest, too,” Rachel confided. “I’ve two older sisters and a brother.”

“It’s really hard being part of a big family.” Joy picked up her sandwich. “Everyone has heard of you. Yet no one knows you. I’m always Hope’s little sister or Temperance’s little sister. Sometimes I wonder if these people realize I have my own name.

“And if they happen to be acquainted with some talent of one of my sisters, it is even worse. They aren’t ever satisfied unless I have that talent, too. As if I could be as good a singer as Patience and as good a dancer as Faith, while also being as good a scholar as Mercy. Well…no one compares my singing to Patience, because she’s too shy to sing in public. But she’s really good.”

Rachel counted the names. “What’s your other sister’s name?”

“What?”

“Joy, Hope, Temperance, Faith, Patience, and Mercy. What is the name of your other sister?”

“Oh. Charity. She’s the one who is just a year older than me. She has it even worse. She follows in everyone’s footsteps, and she doesn’t even get the distinction of being the youngest.”

“Or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.”

“Or that.” Joy nodded. “Though so far, that hasn’t made much of a difference.”

“Except that you are one of the best sorceresses in our entire Freshman class.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Joy looked surprised, as if she had only just noticed how much better she had done in the hands-on portions of their classes than most of the other students.

Suddenly, Joy squealed and jumped to her feet, pointing with her sandwich. “Look. It’s the Princess!”

Nastasia glided toward them, accompanied by her oldest brother, Ivan and Beauregard the Tasmanian Tiger. Seeing her, Rachel was struck again by her exquisite loveliness. With her face lit up by her beneficent smile, she looked like a star fairy or a
tian
, who had descended from some higher place to grace the mortal world for a time with her celestial grace. Pale gold hair surrounded her like a luminous cloud. Leaping up, Rachel rushed to her. The princess looked a bit pale but otherwise well. Rachel would have hugged her, but she remembered Nastasia did not care for familiarity.

Rachel respected that.

Joy did not. She threw herself at the princess and hugged her tightly. Nastasia looked terribly uncomfortable, but she took it graciously. Rachel felt for her. The two of them exchanged sympathetic glances.

“You’re alive!” Joy shouted, squeezing her tightly.

Nastasia endured the familiarity with a kindly, long suffering smile. When Joy released her, she straightened her robes, looking resigned.

“What happened?” Rachel whispered.

“I will tell you all after lunch.” Nastasia whispered back. “The dining hall is hardly an appropriate place for such tidings.”

They returned to the table. Joy clung to the princess’s arm, pestering her with questions. Nastasia did her best to respond politely, but Rachel could tell she was uncomfortable. Eager to rescue her friend by changing the topic, she wracked her brain for a suitable subject.

Leaning forward, she confided, “I have something to tell you, too. An older student—we’ll call him Evil Rumor Monger #1—told me that someone’s developed a new kind of geas.” At Siggy’s look of confusion, she explained. “A spell that compels a person to obey.”

“Like hypnotism?” Valerie pulled out her notebook and jotted this down.

“Yes, very much so.” Rachel cut another piece of her battered fish. “Normally, geases force you to act, but the person is aware of being forced. With this new spell, you don’t know you’ve been geased—which is much worse.”

Siggy scratched Lucky behind his immensely long whiskers. “Did a sorcerer develop this? Or is it another kind of new magic, like Lucky and the ensorcelling paper?”

Rachel’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t think of that. Could be.”

“That paper was like what you just described, wasn’t it?” Sigfried continued, “It made Salome think something. When we described what actually happened, she immediately forgot.”

“That’s rather creepy!” Joy frowned down at her plate. One of her ribbons had fallen in her ketchup again. She pulled it out and wiped it off, sighing.

“Very creepy,” Rachel murmured softly.

“Where did you meet this older student?” the princess sniffed disapprovingly.

“Upstairs, when I was practicing the cantrips we learned in Language.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

“Practicing our spells!” Nastasia’s face lit up. “What a superb idea. I shall practice, too. Any of you who wish are welcome to join me. Perhaps it would be useful to form a practice club. Back in Magical Australia, we had clubs for everything: gardening, tea drinking, de-wombatting the castle.”

Rachel felt as if a large weight had dropped onto her heart. There was no way to explain to her friends that she had been practicing solely for the purpose of catching up with them, because they were already better than she was. If Nastasia took up practicing regularly, Rachel would never catch up.

“As to the matter of the geas—” The princess brought her neatly-folded napkin to her mouth. “We should bring this up at the meeting of the Young Sorcerer’s League tonight.”

“I would kind of rather you didn’t,” Rachel winced, doubly regretting bringing up the subject. “It was told to me in confidence—for me to tell my Father. I do not know if Father wants it bandied about.”

“Ah.” The princess nodded sagely. “We will say no more of it.”

Rachel sighed. The anvil squashing her heart lifted a little. The matter of practicing aside, she really liked the princess. Nastasia reminded her of Rachel’s paternal grandmother. Born during the reign of Queen Victoria, Grandmother Griffin had been a true Victorian
grande dame
. She had been concerned with matters of rank and prestige—with preserving the virtues of the past and keeping them from vanishing in the modern world—but she had also loved horses and galloping. She could clear all the hedges on the estate when fox hunting, even in her two hundredth year. She had been a stern woman but a loving one. She would have approved of Princess Nastasia Romanov as a friend for Rachel.

“Besides,” Rachel added, “I was not invited to the YSL meeting.”