Chosen (9781742844657) (20 page)

I must have made a movement along the path, because Hiroko closed her hand over my wrist.

‘We shouldn't,' she whispered, as though afraid of being overheard. ‘It is…not nice. I am thinking of dead things and dark.'

Her words shocked me out of my little trance. She was right. Now that she had verbalised the problem, I could feel exactly what she meant. I felt slightly ill. Where had I felt something like this before?

Together, we turned away. Every step I took in the opposite direction made me feel better. The ill feeling went away. My head cleared. I took another bite of my apple and felt my senses relax. It was not hard to forget the experience as we walked across the sunny, hilly lawn and started talking again.

We eventually settled ourselves atop a small hill and finished our apples. Other classes must have finished at similar times, because we were soon joined by Sophia and Kendra, and their friend Marcy. Marcy was quiet but seemed nice. She was shorter than me, with long dark hair and glasses. She was South African, she liked healing, and that was pretty much all I learnt about her.

Between the two of them, the twins more than made up for their friend's shyness.

‘We were with Sterling as well,' Kendra explained presently, ‘but she decided that she needed to study once we passed the library doors.'

‘Study? For what?' I asked, perplexed. Sophia and Kendra shared identical smirks.

‘Here's a clue: he's not a book.'

Hiroko and I groaned.

‘The headmaster was inside the library?' Hiroko guessed. The twins nodded.

‘He must have been walking behind us on the stairs,' Sophia said. She'd started making a daisy chain. ‘As we passed the library, he slipped past us and went inside. Sterling – you should have seen her face – just stopped completely.'

‘Then she followed him,' Kendra finished, now ripping daisies out of the lawn for her sister's chain. Again, too early in the year for daisies, yet here they were. ‘She didn't even say a word.'

‘It's a little creepy,' Marcy said quietly, gazing off into the distance.

‘He
is
hot,' Kendra admitted on Sterling's behalf, sending the rest of us into a fit of giggles. ‘He
is
prominent and influential and wealthy. But he
is
also a teacher. And a politician, so therefore
probably
a douche bag. And there's a difference between admiring somebody and stalking them. A big difference.'

We all agreed, and the topic changed as soon as we saw a dejected Sterling herself in the distance, meandering towards us from the mansion. By the time she reached us, we were discussing the jobs we hoped to hold one day, either as a part of, or independent to, the White Elm.

‘I think I want to work as a Healer in a hospital, like Lady Miranda does, and do that sort of work, where it's needed,' Sophia said, weaving her daisies together placidly. ‘I've never really thought of what else I could do. I guess, in the White Elm, I could travel and do similar work, but it's hard to know whether I'd get the chance to do as worthwhile work. Or as much work.'

‘I think it would be wonderful to be the Healer in the White Elm,' Marcy commented. ‘The travel opportunities would be fantastic. But there's only one Healer position, and Emmanuelle's still young. That spot won't come up again until we're old.'

‘Doesn't mean the council can't have other Healers,' Sophia countered. ‘Emmanuelle coming in didn't stop Lady Miranda from keeping her job at the hospital.'

‘I do not know now what I will like to be,' Hiroko said with a slight frown. ‘Before I get –
got
– the letter from White Elm, I have always thought I must have a mortal job like my father, because there is very little place in Japanese society for magical life. The only magical job that can be used in the mortal world is healing, and I am not a Healer.'

‘Me neither,' Kendra said cheerily. ‘I'm a Seer. Soph and I used to joke that she'd be a brain surgeon and I'd be a cheesy telephone psychic.'

‘You have different gifts?' I asked, surprised. Susannah had said that different gifts often occurred within families and that genetics didn't seem to be the only factor. But Kendra and Sophia were identical twins – same genes, same childhood, same experiences, probably the same diet for most of their childhood, too. What other factors could there be?

‘I've never been able to see anything in my head other than my own thoughts,' Sophia said, ‘but Kendra sees things before they happen. And Kendra can't heal yet.'

‘Once you get to know us, you'll be less surprised,' Kendra added, smiling. ‘We're not really very alike. For instance, Sophia is the boring one.'

‘And Kendra thinks she's the funny one,' Sophia said dryly. She glanced up at Sterling, who had just reached us, and shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand. ‘You caught up, then?'

‘He just disappeared!' Sterling said, dropping herself right in the middle of the daisies that the twins were picking. ‘I just went inside to read up on Seeing-'

‘Sure,' Kendra interjected, and though Sterling tried to ignore her, when she continued, she was smiling slightly.

‘He was just pulling books off shelves, skirting through them, then putting them back, like he was looking for something,' Sterling explained, picking at a knot in her shoelaces. ‘He went into a different aisle and then he just vanished.'

‘Do you think it's possible that Renatus might have been avoiding you?' I asked, knowing that Sterling would take the jibe for what it was – harmless teasing. She smiled.

‘I just want to get to know him,' she insisted, although everyone present, who knew better, burst into fresh giggles.

From his office window, Renatus watched as the last of the students finally trooped back inside. The sun was setting, and dinner had been called. Despite feeling rather hungry, he had no intention of attending the evening meal. It was an awkward experience he could do without, sitting at a long table of colleagues who wished he'd just disappear, avoiding the gazes of the dozen or more admiring young female students, his troubled mind elsewhere. No; he could have Fionnuala bring him something later. Perhaps he'd just join the staff for their evening meal once the students had gone to bed.

Earlier, while reading a letter from an elderly Welsh sorceress demanding that the White Elm assimilate with Lisandro for the good of the magical world, Renatus had felt a sickening jolt in his heart that had nothing to do with the stupid letter. He had known immediately what it had to mean.

Pain. Loss. Revenge. Guilt.

The orchard
.

He had moved to the large arched window of his study, and stared out across his estate. Straight away, he had seen them – two students, girls, standing at the edge of the long-abandoned apple orchard, staring down the path. Could they feel it, too? Could they sense the significance of that place? He imagined so.

Renatus had waited, watching the girls as they deliberated with themselves. Unconsciously, his senses brushed their intentions. The Asian girl was understandably repelled by the darkness of the path, but the other…the other, though frightened, found the darkness familiar.

Renatus recognised her, then, by her energy. Aristea, a young Irish student with an affinity for scrying, according to Qasim. The only natural scrier at the Academy, Renatus found her fascinating – so fascinating, in fact, that he'd broken his own rule of not speaking to the students. Ever since Lord Gawain had mentioned the death of her family, Renatus had taken an objective interest in the girl, as though she were an extremely unusual museum exhibit.

He'd taken the time to talk to her, and he almost wished he hadn't. Aristea was just like
her
. Her energy was so similar, and her demeanour (timid, yet also defiant) took him back a decade to better times.

After a few seconds, the friend had pulled Aristea away, and with every step they took, Renatus felt himself relax along with them.

He should have known that with thirty-whatever students running around the estate, somebody would eventually stumble upon that place. Just because he had avoided it for seven years did not make it invisible to everyone else.

Unsettled, Renatus had been unable to return to his paperwork. The disgruntled Welsh crone could wait until later. His every thought had been of the pathway into the orchard, and what he could do to stop students from following it and learning his secret.

One of his secrets, anyway.

He had suddenly remembered a book in his library, written by his own great-grandfather, which outlined methods of hiding dark presences and the traces left behind where dark magic is used. Surely he had poured over it a dozen times, but maybe he had missed something? And there were other books, too. Books he knew he had read before. But he didn't want to think about the orchard anymore. He didn't want to worry about anyone wandering down the path and seeing what was there and feeling what awful things had been done there.
Everything
could be lost if anyone learnt that one truth.

He had gone straight to the library, ignoring his surroundings, the giddy whispers of young girls, with his mind everywhere else as it usually was.

He had only stepped through the library doors when yet another student noticed him and decided to follow. Renatus felt a flash of annoyance, although only a very strong Empath would have been able to feel that – his aura and his emotions were always well-guarded. He couldn't even walk around his own house without picking up a trail of obsessive fans. In many ways, he couldn't wait until the students' educations were finished, or until the White Elm decided to give the young people a holiday. They had been in his house for a week and already, Renatus was getting sick of it.

At the same time, having the students here was a good thing. They were the most powerful young sorcerers in the entire world, and they were here, able to be watched, observed. They were powerful blobs of potential, like clay, waiting for someone like Renatus to take one of them into his hands and mould that student the way he needed them to be.

He could wait. He would wait patiently for that
one
to present him or herself.

Aware of the strawberry-blonde student's keen gaze, Renatus had moved into another aisle and stepped directly into what seemed like a normal book case. The next step he took was through the wall of his study, back where he'd started.

There were a number of these secret little wormholes all around the house, designed by a distant but brilliant ancestor to assist him and his family to escape if ever the estate was attacked. The openings of the wormholes were sensitive to Renatus's bloodline, along with most things in this house, and so no one but a blood relation of the family could use the wormholes or even sense them – which, of course, suited Renatus just fine.

But there was nothing to do in his office but to work and glance out the window at the orchard, and he hadn't even managed to retrieve the book before he'd lost patience with being stalked and returned. So he spent the remainder of the day pacing the study, staring out the window, and occasionally managing to get some work done. He knew that tomorrow he would regret wasting this afternoon, but he knew that he was much too unsettled to get anything important done. His thoughts were locked onto the orchard.

Now, Renatus watched the sun disappear behind the apple trees. Perhaps tonight was the night to be brave. He turned away and waved a hand; the study door opened, and he left. Instead of following the hall, however, he walked directly into the wall opposite his door, activating yet another wormhole, and stepped out of the pantry door of the large underground kitchen.

Fionnuala looked up at him and smiled, as though it were perfectly common for the man of the house to stride out of her pantry.

‘Master Renatus, you should be at dinner,' she scolded lightly. ‘You haven't eaten all day. I had the girls make your favourite; roast duck, with vegetables and potatoes and gravy.'

Renatus paused beside the large, steaming dish. It
was
his favourite.

‘Save me a plate,' he said. ‘A big plate, if it isn't too much trouble.'

‘Don't be silly,' Fionnuala beamed, already preparing a heaped plate to go back beside the oven to stay warm. ‘It's never too much trouble for you, Master Renatus.'

She reached up and briefly touched his cheek adoringly, like an aunt might, and Renatus felt the usual wash of warmth. It was wonderful to feel loved; to know that for at least one person, the world would not be better off without you.

Grateful for her unconditional love, Renatus leant down and kissed Fionnuala on the forehead. She'd mothered him and fussed over him since before he could remember. She'd always treated him as though he were a little prince, instead of the son of a reclusive and selfish sorcerer. She'd read to him as a toddler, given him treats from the kitchen in the middle of the night as a growing child, and supported any decision he had ever made as a young adult. Fionnuala adored Renatus, and wouldn't hear a bad word against him – and it would destroy her, he knew, to discover some of the things he had done.