The other side of the room was comprised of a nice little kitchen with cabinets built to the curve of the turret. A couple of round wooden tables with mismatched chairs stood at the center of the room.
“Come on,” she said.
There was another massive wooden door on the far side of the common area. She was already opening it by the time I crossed the room. We followed the corridor to the end, and she knocked on the last door on the left.
“Come in,” a gentle voice called out.
Eve opened the door to reveal a pretty room with wood floors, a pair of twin beds, two desks, two lamps and two big windows.
A curvy girl with dark, curly hair sat on one of the beds with a paperback in her hands.
“Good evening, Cori,” Eve said. “This is your new roommate, Bella. I expect you’ll show her the ropes?”
“Yes, of course,” Cori said, scrambling out of bed. “Nice to meet you, Bella.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Eve said, before I could reply. “Good luck. Bella.”
“Uh, thank you,” I said, wondering if I was allowed to called her by her first name now that we were on school grounds. But I was also pretty sure she hadn’t mentioned her last name.
She was gone before I could formulate a question.
“Hey,” I said to Cori, who was eyeing me like I was an exotic bird.
“Is this your first year too?” I asked.
“Second, but I got here in the middle of last year,” she said.
“Was it hard getting used to everything?” I asked.
I had been doing fine back in Pottsboro, but this seemed like a very different situation. I’ve never had a roommate before.
“There are only ten or so girls in each year,” she said, her brown eyes twinkling. “It wasn’t too hard to make some friends and catch on. You’ll be just fine.”
The door burst open behind me and I nearly jumped out of my shoes as two more young women strode in.
“Coriander,” the first one shouted out joyfully. “Did you make those cookies?”
“They smell amazing,” the other one added.
The two women could not have been more different physically.
The first was tall and athletic with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and bright blue eyes.
The second was petite and slender with a cloud of long raven-colored hair hanging around her shoulders, and dark eyes so large they gave her a hungry look.
“Who are you?” the big blonde asked, noticing that I didn’t belong.
“Guys, this is Bella. She’s new,” Cori said. She looked pleased, like she had invented and built me herself. “Bella, this is Kendall, and this is Anya.”
She pointed to the blonde first, and then the dark-haired girl.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Legacy?” Kendall asked, her face blank.
I blinked at her, at a total loss.
“Did anyone else in your family ever attend this school?” dark-haired Anya asked me quietly.
“Wh- oh, no,” I said. “Definitely not.”
“Hm,” Kendall hummed dismissively, and turned back to Cori. “Cookies?”
“They’re for after the ceremony,” Cori said with just a hint of a question mark at the end of the statement.
“Ugh,” Anya sighed. “I almost forgot that was tonight.”
“Once a month,” Cori shrugged.
“I’m totally having one now,” Kendall decided, spotting the plate on Cori’s desk.
We all watched as she took a cookie off the top of the pile and bit off a big bite.
“See you out there,” she said over her shoulder with her mouth full as she headed out.
“I don’t know how she wound up in our house,” Cori said thoughtfully.
“The Bellwethers are pretty laid back,” Anya said. “You’ll like it.”
I did like the sound of that.
Cori sat down on the edge of her bed and Anya sat beside her.
“What was all that about a ceremony tonight?” I asked, sitting on my bed, opposite them.
“Oh, it’s just this dumb thing we do every full moon,” Cori said.
“A witchy thing?” I asked, trying not to sound as curious as I felt.
“Yeah, kind of,” she said. “How much do you know about this school?”
“I only found out it existed last night,” I admitted.
Anya’s eyes widened, making her look almost Bambi-like.
“Well, you’ll soon learn that we have a mission,” Cori said. “It’s a long Latin poem, but it basically adds up to protecting the library.”
“Is the local library in some sort of trouble?” I asked, wondering how far away the library even was. This wooded mountaintop didn’t exactly seem like the ideal place for government services. In my experience, most library problems were solved with things like bake sales. Maybe that explained the cookies.
“The library here at the school,” Anya said. “It’s full of magic texts and artifacts.”
“It’s almost more of a museum,” Cori added. “Anyway, we gain the library’s knowledge and in turn we protect it.”
I nodded, wondering how literal protect it was supposed to be. Eve had said she taught combat…
“And the Lord Protectors protect the castle,” Anya said.
“Who are they?” I asked.
Cori and Anya exchanged a quick look.
“Are you talking about the stupid ceremony?” Kendall asked, striding back into the room. “These are good, Cori, I’m having another one.”
Cori watched, looking very frustrated, as Kendall took another cookie.
Kendall closed her eyes and moaned over the bite she took, then sat down beside me on the bed.
“Did they tell you what it actually is?” Kendall asked.
I shook my head slowly. “Not yet.”
“It’s a tribute,” Kendall said meaningfully.
That didn’t help at all.
“What do you mean?” I asked when I realized she wasn’t planning to explain any more.
“I mean, every single girl at this school is offered up to the Lord Protector,” Kendall said. “If he comes, that is.”
“He never comes,” Cori said dismissively. “And don’t you have somewhere to be, Kendall?”
“Fuck, I guess I’ve got to get back to my room for prep,” Kendall said, jumping up. “See you.”
As soon as she was gone, Cori breathed a sigh of relief and got up to hide the cookies.
“The ceremony is no big deal, Bella,” Anya said. “It’s more of a formality. But we’ll be standing around the courtyard in the howling
