Chosen (9781742844657) (11 page)

Emmanuelle didn't treat us like kids. She spoke to us as equals, which was cool of her. She showed us the third floor, full of large rooms that would be our classrooms, and the fourth floor, which was where the White Elm stayed overnight.

‘In an absolute emergency that I am somehow not already aware of and if I am on the premises, you can find me in this room,' she said. She showed us the door to her room. She made us memorise how many doors down it was from the staircase. She carried on and we followed in silence, fully aware that this was not a part of the house we were welcome to hang out in normally. ‘This,' Emmanuelle said finally, stopping in front of a heavy, thin oak door with no handle or lock visible, ‘is the ‘ead's office.'

‘Renatus's office?' Sterling asked keenly, her already bright eyes sparkling with interest. ‘How does he get in? There's no doorknob.'

Emmanuelle laughed, sounding a tiny bit resentful.

‘No one can enter this room from the outside – except Renatus. It's enchanted. The spells on this estate are incredibly powerful. Renatus's spell-casting abilities quite outshine those of the rest of us, I'm afraid.'

‘Even Lord Gawain couldn't enter this room?' I asked, shocked. No
way
could Renatus be that strong. Emmanuelle smiled.

‘The spell guarding this door only allows Renatus to open it. Once open, anyone may enter, with ‘is permission.'

‘But Lord Gawain can't open it?' Xanthe pressed. Emmanuelle hesitated.

‘I'm not sure ‘e's bothered trying,' she said finally, as another group, led by the unbelievably skinny Anouk, approached. ‘I don't believe ‘e ‘as. It isn't considered polite to enter a man's office without ‘im, especially if ‘e ‘as put up spells such as Renatus's.'

I smiled at two of the three girls in Anouk's group – they were the twins. Emmanuelle directed us away before we had a chance to talk, so I waved, hoping to see them again the following day.

‘Is Renatus stronger than Lord Gawain?' Sterling asked as we headed for the second floor.

‘I can't answer that,' Emmanuelle said instantly, as though the answer was rehearsed. ‘The question lacks a context.'

Sterling badgered the White Elm sorceress all the way to our new dormitory. Emmanuelle was clipped but patient. I would have snapped at the American witch by now – Emmanuelle obviously had a very small knowledge of Renatus, and had apparently shared everything she knew.

‘Your keys, girls,' she said as we all reached a tall, thin door that matched nearly every other door in the mansion. In the hallway, a few other people were entering their rooms one at a time. I unclasped the chain around my neck; Hiroko and Xanthe pulled their keys from their pockets. Sterling, interestingly enough, had hidden hers down the front of her top.

‘You never know,' she said when we stared at her. ‘You can't trust most people.'

‘Alright, you should enter one-at-a-time,' Emmanuelle explained to us when we had our keys in our hands. ‘Only six keys fit the lock – each of yours, mine, and the master key in Renatus's office.'

‘Renatus can enter?' Sterling asked excitedly, her bright eyes shining.

‘I'm sure the keys ‘ave already been tested but it would not ‘urt to check,' Emmanuelle continued as if Sterling had not spoken, ‘so once you're inside, pull the door shut behind you. It will lock automatically. Then the next person can check that their key works, too. Hiroko?' I could hear the French sorceress make a concerted effort to pronounce the h at the beginning of Hiroko's name. ‘Would you like to go first? You're the eldest.'

‘I am?' my friend asked, surprised.

‘Yes,' Emmanuelle said, equally surprised that Hiroko hadn't worked it out herself. ‘The girls in Dormitory Two are predominantly sixteen-year-olds – the four youngest female students. You are the next four, and so forth.'

I realised that the Prescott twins must be older than Hiroko and me. I doubted it was by much.

Hiroko did as she was told. She unlocked the door and pushed it open. I could see a good-sized room beyond it, with plush beds, and a pile of suitcases and bags on the floor in the middle. She walked through and shut herself in. 

The Greek girl silently slid her key into the lock, turned it, and walked in. Sterling went next. Her key was perfectly fine. I desperately hoped that mine was, too. When the oak door shut behind her, I drew in a breath and slid my key into the lock. It fitted. Good. I slowly turned it but there was resistance on my arm. I felt myself stiffen, panicking. Was I going to be rejected from my own room? But then I realised that the resistance was Emmanuelle's hand on my elbow. I sighed, relieved.

‘You needn't worry about things like your key not working; you
are
meant to be ‘ere,' Emmanuelle said. She smiled and let me go. ‘If you ‘ave any questions, remember that you and the other three can always come to me. Alright?'

I nodded and smiled back, then entered the dormitory. Was everyone on the White Elm a telepath, or just scarily intuitive? I saw Emmanuelle turn away just as I took my key back. The chain, still hanging from the silver key, swung around my fingers as I turned and pulled the door closed. Hiroko, Sterling and Xanthe were disentangling their possessions from the pile in front of the door. My blanket and book were right on the top.

The first thing I noticed was that my new room had no windows, giving it a timeless feeling. How would I know day from night here? The room had four beds, all with the headboard against the same wall as the door and with a round little reading table to the left of the pillow. Four beds, four tables, four desks at the foot of each bed, four chairs, and four closets. There were two other oak doors, one on each side of the room.

Sterling and Xanthe had chosen the beds of the right side of the room (the beds that had been on my left when I first entered the dorm) and Hiroko had the far left one, so I took the bed between her and the door.

‘Just check that your key fits that closet,' Sterling suggested, pointing to the wardrobe opposite my bed. ‘Ours all fit these ones. When's your birthday? Xanthe thinks they're in age order too and I just thought it would be a good idea for us to have the bed that corresponds with the closet we've been given.'

‘July,' I said as Sterling tipped a suitcase out onto her chosen bed.

‘Then that one should definitely be yours, because you're between my birthday and Hiroko's,' she confirmed. ‘Just check though.'

I did as she suggested, and found that my key fitted this lock perfectly, too. So this was my wardrobe. That was my new bed. This was my desk.

This was my new home.

For about twenty minutes we unpacked our clothing into the closets opposite our beds, discussing our lives. Xanthe didn't talk much, but she told us she lived in Greece in a big house with her eight brothers and sisters, and had a red Mexican walking fish called Elmo. Sterling had a younger half-brother and three older stepbrothers – her witch parents were divorced, and she lived between their houses.

‘My dad remarried, and they've had a son – that's my brother Jamie – but my stepmother is an idiot,' she explained as she hung an expensive-looking jacket up in her closet. ‘She's got so much mortal blood and so little magical talent you'd laugh if I tried to tell you she was a witch. She's got another two sons from her previous relationships. They're the laziest jerks you can imagine.'

‘What about your real mother? Is she remarried, too?' I asked, glad I could ask questions with these girls and not expect them to get upset.

‘Yes. My stepdad's not so bad. He's got another son, too, but he's cool. He drives me places.'

‘I wish I had brothers and sisters,' Hiroko mentioned.

‘Why don't you take a few of mine?' Xanthe asked, and we laughed. ‘I've got enough to spare a couple.'

Once done unpacking our clothes, we put our herbs and tools and stuff into our lockers. Each of us found the locker whose lock matched our keys. Last of all we arranged our personal items on our desks and bedside tables. I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one propping up photo frames next to my bed – Hiroko had a picture of a man and woman who had to be her parents; Sterling had two frames, one with a little boy of about nine and one of a Border Collie; and Xanthe hung a big photo of her large family of eleven above her bed.

I looked back at my own. One frame contained a photo of Angela and me together, taken by our cousin Kelly at a family gathering about seven months ago. The other was old, taken by me nearly six years ago in front of our family home by the sea. Mum, Dad, Aidan and Angela smiled at me through the dusty glass and through the many turbulent years that had passed since my camera had snapped that shot. It wasn't even that good of a photo – Angela's blue-green eyes were closed against the glare and Dad's face was blurry with accidental movement. But it was the only one I had. We'd never been the photographic sort of family, and other than a few bath time and playtime pictures of us kids, this was the closest thing I had to a family portrait. I loved it as much as I loved Cedric, who I now removed from my bag thoughtlessly.

‘Oh, how cute!' Sterling exclaimed to me. For a moment I stared at her, and then realised she was talking about my toy rabbit. I blushed.

‘My grandmother made it for me,' I muttered, laying him on the bed. How embarrassing. But Sterling reached into her bag and extracted a squishy purple lump that looked vaguely like a stegosaurus.

‘This is Stuart,' she admitted, her freckled cheeks colouring. ‘I was so scared I'd be the only girl who brought a toy. But I couldn't leave him behind.'

I smiled, rearranging Cedric into a position I suspected would be much more comfortable for him if he were able to distinguish the difference between comfortable and not.

‘His name is Cedric. I've had him forever. I can't sleep without him.'
Not that he really improves my quality of sleep, admittedly…

Sterling laughed. She sat down on her bed and started brushing her shiny, strawberry blonde hair.

‘I was totally nervous about bringing Stuart – I was scared people would tease me. But I guess it doesn't feel right when I'm not holding something, you know? In any case, I'm glad I'm not the only one.'

Before bed we checked out the other two doors, which turned out to be our bathrooms. We were spoilt, with two ensuites. Both were tiled entirely in different shades of blue and the far wall was lined with cubicles. Two were toilets and two were showers. The wall to our right had two pedestal basins, two mirror-door, medicine cabinets, a little rubbish bin and a tall glass cabinet full of fresh towels. The left wall was just a mirror – full-length and full-width, the entire wall.

I found my toiletries and began organising it all into the first medicine cabinet while Hiroko claimed the other one. We brushed our teeth and got changed.

The beds were clean, snug and plush – just perfect. I wondered if I'd have nightmares here, too.

The four of us stayed up for at least another hour after that, talking. I learned that I had absolutely nothing in common with Xanthe. Sterling talked almost endlessly about Renatus, although eventually she
did
stop talking about the headmaster and started describing her past boyfriends and why they no longer were her boyfriends. Hiroko was the first to drop off to sleep, and after that I lost interest in the conversation. It wasn't long later that I dozed off, too, into a remarkably dreamless slumber, wrapped warmly in my sister's woollen blanket.

The black waves of the unpredictable, wild night sea crashed repeatedly into the smooth paleness of the shore. Lisandro found the rhythmic pounding to be soothing and beautiful in its consistency. The men and women around him, he knew, thought it a little foreboding, only now recognising and fearing its awesome destructive power. It was a necessary sacrifice, Lisandro thought to himself. None of them would really understand, but Peter did. He and Peter had talked about this all week.

Peter had always been a risk to have onboard – his conscience and his affection for that blasted French witch had unsettled the loyalty he had for Lisandro. It had been a concern of Lisandro's from the outset that Peter might one day lose his senses and go running back to Emmanuelle and White Elm with their location and anything else he might have overheard.

For several weeks after that fateful night in Susannah's garden, Lisandro had wondered whether letting both Jackson and Peter in on his plans, and bringing them both along with him, was as good an idea as he'd first thought. Jackson was a little unstable, but greedy and determined and more than willing to be led into victory. He'd proven his loyalty years before, failing in his task but proving his willingness to do anything Lisandro asked.

It was because of Jackson's failure seven years ago and Lord Gawain's selfish refusal to grant Lisandro the power to fix things that he'd needed to convert Peter. Peter…Peter was weak. The idea of rivalling the White Elm had excited him at first, a couple of months before their desertion, but the reality of abandoning his code and betraying the trust of the woman for whom he harboured a secret love had been more than Peter could handle. He had shown loyalty and great strength of character when Lisandro had interrogated him, but Lisandro had watched over the past few months as Peter's resolve had slowly crumbled away.