It occurred to me that the styrofoam box in the cemetery was practically the only evidence I’d ever been in Pottsboro at all.
“Good,” she said crisply. “It won’t be much longer.”
I nodded again, then turned to the mountainside to avoid conversation.
Mist danced between the trees that were brave or foolish enough to cling to the steep cliffs. The air tasted thin, though I was sure we couldn’t have climbed high enough for all that.
The horse snorted, his breath pluming in the air. It was a big draft horse, dapple gray and verging on elderly.
The driver was even more elderly and gray. Eve had introduced him as Silas Brake, the Primrose Academy groundskeeper.
Above us, the sky roiled with clouds. My mind went to every horror story I’d ever read. What would happen if we were still out here, plodding up the hill when darkness came? Would there be wolves, or murderers, or worse in the trees, waiting for us?
I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.
I was being ridiculous. I was just scared because all of this was so new, that was all. There was no way a professional woman in a gorgeous pantsuit would drag me up a mountain to get murdered.
My mind went back to the creature and the vines. It was real. It had to be. And it was going to give me exactly the power I needed.
For Jon.
I closed my eyes and pictured his face - smiling eyes, one dimple on his right cheek, dark hair falling over his forehead - just like he was, before a series of mistakes and luckless turns put us where we were now.
I’ll find a way to make you smile again.
The cart bumped again, and I opened my eyes to see we were turning a final corner.
The trees opened up before us, revealing a wide-open lawn.
A stone path led to the front door. The walkway was interrupted at the halfway mark by a marble fountain full of angry looking mermaid statues, surrounding a horse that appeared to be rearing up out of the water. Whether it was supposed to be standing in chest-deep water or being birthed out of the sea was impossible to say.
Near the base, in the shadow of the overhanging stone, someone had hastily painted a raven taking flight. It would have been almost impossible to see from any other angle than the one I had. Beneath the bird were the words, HE IS COMING.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Eve said pleasantly, as if she already knew the answer.
I wasn’t sure if she meant the creepy fountain or the granite expanse of the school itself.
Primrose Academy was massive, stretching across the whole meadow, the east and west wings plunging into the forest on each side. It was easily four stories tall, with interconnecting slate roofs that seemed almost ethereal in the light of the newly risen full moon.
Odd little porches and porticoes extended out over nothing at intervals, as if the school were a giant host and they were its symbiotic hangers-on, perched at odd angles to keep an eye on the trees and sky.
“It’s huge,” I murmured, hearing how stupid it sounded the second the words left my mouth.
“You’ll learn your way around soon enough,” Eve said with a perfunctory smile.
The cart followed the driveway around and stopped at last by the open porch.
“Thank you, Silas,” Eve said, hopping down briskly with my battered suitcase like Katherine Hepburn in one of the black and white movies I used to watch when I visited my grandparents.
I followed her down, far less gracefully, stumbling after her on shaky legs.
“That ride really did a number on you,” she remarked.
“I can carry it,” I said, glancing at the suitcase.
She shrugged and handed it over. “This is your last chance to change your mind.”
The school loomed over me, casting us both in its shadow. But I wasn’t going to be cowed. This was where I was going to learn to help my brother.
“I’m ready,” I said gamely, and we headed up the wide front steps together.
5
Bella
The massive front doors opened into a sweeping center hall without so much as a creak.
The floors were polished wood. A curving staircase split at the landing, each half leading to one wing. At the back of the hall, I could just see light coming through an opening, but I wasn’t sure if it was a door, a window, or an optical illusion.
“This way,” Eve said, leading me up the stairs.
A huge, panoramic window exposed the rear grounds, illuminated by the almost day-bright moonlight. A stone courtyard led to a boxwood labyrinth, which ended just before the darkness of the forest.
Eve took the west side of the staircase at the landing, and I followed.
Yards of priceless hand knotted rug adorned the whole run of stairs. I wondered who had the task of cleaning this place.
Hopefully not the students. Maybe that was how I would be expected to earn my free education. Had I come all this way just to be Cinderella-ed?
Eve opened a wooden door and headed down a corridor that ended in an open circle of space that told me we must be in one of the turrets. The scent of fresh baked cookies filled the air.
“This is the Bellwether House common area,” she told me. “You’ll spend free time here, conversing with other students in your house.”
So I was a Bellwether? Just like that? She wasn’t even going to consult any form of predictive headwear first?
I looked around appreciatively. The common area was at least three times the size of my apartment.
A curved window seat spanned one whole side of the room. Big windows on the back wall overlooked a stone courtyard between the places where the east and west wings extended backward. The labyrinth and the trees were visible beyond the
