Love lines (20 page)

“No problem, I asked for it myself.”

“Okay, let's go home then.”

We got back to Dever in the evening. Despite the late
hour, there were many people outside on campus. Students and teachers were
enjoying the unusually warm Saturday night. Evan helped me bring the purchases
to the room and left, saying he didn’t want his presence to get on Amanda’s
nerves. To my surprise, she wasn’t in the room, but there was a white piece of
paper on my bed.

 
“I’m with Christian. When you come back, come meet
us, there's news we need to talk about,”
said the note.

“Great!
”
I thought.
I haven’t planned on
going to see Christian
that
soon, but according to the note I had no
choice. So I left all the bags on my bed and went out.

When I knocked on the door to Christian’s room Darcy
answered.

“Hi, Eileen. Come on, we’ve been waiting for you,” she
said, quickly shutting the door behind me.

 Once inside, I saw all of our
cloak-and-dagger
friends there. Amanda and Evan were reading some papers that Darcy tried to put
in the right order, sitting on the floor beside the couch. Christian was
standing by the window, concentrating on a sheet of noticeably aged paper,
illuminating it from behind with his desk lamp.

“Eileen, you wouldn’t believe what we’ve found!” said
Amanda excitedly, coming to me. Christian, not looking up from his focus,
asked:

“Eileen, does the name of Patricia Clark ring a bell?”

“Of course, this is my mother's cousin. What's the
matter with her?” I asked, approaching him.

“Look at this,” he said, showing me the old piece of
paper. It was a letter from Camilla Stewart, addressed to my aunt.

“Dear Patricia! I know how much you are worried about
Catherine and her child. F. and I have found a way to help them. In this
letter, you will find a detailed instruction that will save them both. And
remember, the light always helps us to see what was hidden by the darkness.
C.S.”

“What does it all mean?” I asked.

“Darcy, tell her,” said Christian, walking away a few
steps from me. We both felt the proximity affecting us. I was glad that
Christian tried to stay relaxed, but the tension between us, I think, was quite
obvious to all the present. Evan and Amanda, seemed to have announced a
provisional truce.

“Here's the thing, Eileen,” Darcy started, “this
morning, I needed to take some documents to the office of Alexis. She wasn’t
there, and Beatrice was absent too. I decided to leave the papers on her desk,
since the door was open. I was about to leave when my attention was captured by
these papers,” she said, pointing to the sheets spread out all over the room.
“I looked at them and recognized my grandmother’s handwriting. I pick up a few
pages and realized that these are the missing parts of the diary. But not only
of the one
you
had found. There are still a few pages that I don’t understand
where to put. The letter in your hands was hidden between the pages. We think
that the
“F”
- means Frederick, since the other pages have references to
him too. Everything else is still not that clear.”

“Except for one thing,” said Christian, walking up to me
and turning the paper in my hands to the light bulb. At first I thought I was
seeing things. Then, when I moved closer and the paper caught the light, I saw
the picture hidden on the back.

“This is our tattoo!” still not believing my own eyes, I
exclaimed.

“Yes. We couldn’t understand the words of Camilla’s
instructions,” Evan said, “but then drew attention to the hidden meaning of the
letter.
“Light always helps us to see what was hidden by the darkness.”
Christian
proposed to illuminate the paper, and we saw this.”

“Can you guess, what could it mean?” asked Darcy.

“Only that the tattoos Christian and I have are not
accidental. But the letter mentions only mine, then how did Christian get his
tattoo?”

“As the letter says, it was done in order to protect you
and Catherine. And Christian’s tattoo still remains a mystery,” said Amanda.

“As well as those words about
the protection
,”
added Christian.

“The images you both have, are not just pictures. There
are Luckenbooth brooches,” said Darcy, “a symbol of love and fidelity. They
were popular in the seventeenth century. Their names come from “The Luckenbooth
or Locking Booths” - small shops that were very tiny and could be securely
locked at night. They were a feature of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. The first
Luckenbooth brooches date from the late XVII century. They were quite small in
size and were worn to protect the owner against
evil
eyes. During the
XVIII and XIX centuries the Luckenbooth brooch became larger and more elaborate
with inscriptions on the back such as biblical references or the initials of
the couple and the date of their betrothal.”

“From 1850 onwards, the intertwined hearts resembling
the letter
“M”
with thistle fleur de lys were used; these came to be
called Mary’s Brooches or even Queen Mary’s Brooches. Mary Queen of Scots’s
husband, Lord Darnley gave her one.”

“Wow, that’s interesting!” I exclaimed in surprise. “So
what did you end up with? Alexis intentionally hid all the pages of diaries,
and she didn’t want their contents to become known to anyone else. Christian
and I were tattooed intentionally too. Patricia knew Camilla. Could this mean
that my mom knows something about this story? And what about Frederic? What he
has to do with all this?”

“That’s not all,” said Amanda. “Our
genius
Evan
forgot to mention that Frederic Fairey was
the one
bound to my father.”

I was absolutely shocked.

“What?!”

“Yeah,” Evan said guiltily rubbing the back of his head.
“For some reason I thought I had already told you that.”

“And we are back to our father again,” said Christian.
“He'll be back next week and I don’t want to talk to anyone else. We don’t need
the extra attention on this. Darcy has already risked too much, taking these
papers out of Alexis’s office.”

“Did anyone see you?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t even leave my documents there, so not to
draw suspicion,” she said.

“Okay, so we wait for Patrick to come back. Is there
anything interesting on the rest of the pages?”

“We read only a portion, but didn’t find anything
worthwhile,” said Amanda. “Darcy just brought them recently.”

“Wait, Evan, you said that Patrick had gone along with
Alexis. Has she already come back?” I asked confused.

“I saw her this morning,” Darcy said.

“As far as I know, the Congress goes without breaks.
Alexis wouldn’t be able to fly to Dever and get back there,” Evan commented.

“Maybe Alexis didn’t go to the Congress? She's not a
Keeper, why would she need to go to London?” asked Christian.

“She said was going to the Congress,” pointed
Evan. “On the day of her departure she wanted to see me to talk about our
additional classes with Eileen.”

“Maybe she just forgot something and returned to pick it
up?” Amanda suggested.

“Maybe,” said Christian. Our eyes met and I realized
that  he didn’t  believe  in  such  simple  coincidence.  Neither did I.

“Look what I’ve found,” suddenly said Evan.

“Today was the presentation of some new candidates
for the presidency of Dever. All three of them have presented a good report
about their own visions of its future development.

Melanie Wallenberg proposed a new system of
determining the ability to control the elements.

Martin Cruz proposed to tighten the requirements for
the selection of future Wizardy students.

Patrick Fairey spoke about the changes in the lists
of subjects for each faculty and students’ opportunities to choose the number
of their classes. It’s a pity that he won’t be allowed to make his ideas a
reality, his opponents have a very good support.”

“It turns out that our father was one of the
candidates,” Amanda summed up.

“The main question is why Alexis is not listed here,”
Evan said. “According to the record’s date, she came to Dever just after these
elections. That's what we need to find out. I think we should share our
responsibilities, otherwise we will all just get confused completely. I suggest
that Amanda and I continue to study the diaries, Darcy will try to learn how
Alexis managed to become a head of Dever, Christian will wait for Patrick’s
arrival, and Eileen... Well, you just need to think about your own safety.”

“Great! Thank you, Evan. Then I can go to bed at last,
since I have nothing else to do here,” I said irritably heading for the door.

“Eileen, don’t get mad,” Evan called. “Your safety is
something we all are worried about. If you try to be everywhere at once, it
will only ruin our plan.”

“I'll keep an eye on her,” all of a sudden said
Christian.

“No, thanks, I don’t need a babysitter!” I hissed,
giving him the most evil, which I was capable of glance, and left the room,
slamming the door behind me.

 “Since when have they become so smart?!” I muttered to
myself, walking down the hall to my room. Everyone has decided everything for
me and hasn’t even thought to ask my opinion! Let them have it their way. I
will decide what to do next on my own.

Chapter 19. First
answers (
Christian)

“You shouldn’t have said that,” pointed Evan accusingly,
as Eileen was gone.

“What was I supposed to do?” I snapped back.

“First, you should calm down and try to talk to her. She
is still upset about the party, and then you propose to become her personal
babysitter. Think about it, anyone in her place would get mad.”

I wearily sat down on the bed. I really needed to calm
down. All those endless questions just drove me crazy. I couldn’t see the end
of them and felt really miserable. On top of everything else Eileen hated me
like poison.

“I should probably go now,” said Darcy, rising from the
floor. “Do you mind, if we leave the papers spread out here? I don’t want to
sort them again later.”

“Of course, Christian is used to paper messes in his
room,” said Evan, grinning.

”Then, see you guys tomorrow,” she said and went away.

“I need to go too. Maybe I’ll get to talk to Eileen,”
Amanda said. “Although I’m not sure she will listen to me today.  I'm on  the  enemy’s
 side  now,”  she  added,  smiling slightly.

Unlike everyone else, Evan seemed to have no intention
of leaving. He sat comfortably on my couch and began to read a page of the
diary.

“Are you going to stay and sleep here?” I asked, raising
my eyebrows.

“If that is necessary, yes. But I actually wanted to
talk to you without witnesses,” he said, folding his arms.

“I knew you had something on your mind,” I replied,
leaning back against the pillows.

“Firstly, Eileen is still angry because of Vanessa. I
hope that you won’t allow such a circus to happen ever again. And secondly, I
was thinking about her aunt and Camilla. Don’t you think that their
communication seems weird? Where could Camilla see her if that woman didn’t
have access to Dever?”

“I wish I knew. I think that Eileen doesn’t know
everything about her family. They have a lot of secrets. For example, the fact
that her grandmother accepted the news of her coming to Dever so easily, or
Nora’s assurance that she was Fairey... all of this just blows my mind! What if
she really belongs to my family? How can our bond be explained?”

“She can be Fairey only in one case, Christian.”

“Which one?”

“Her father was one of the Fairey’s.”

I stared at Evan speechless. His assumptions were the
most  ridiculous thing I had ever heard from him.

“No, it's just impossible,” I shook my head. “Eileen
never knew her father. He left them before her birth.”

“So what? It means nothing. Perhaps he left them many
years ago intentionally?”

“Intentionally? Seriously, Evan, what reasons do you think
he had to do that?”

“I don’t know and that is exactly what makes me
suspicious.”

“You must be out of your mind, Evan. Though, I can’t
blame you for being crazy, man. Sometimes I think that there is no way out of
this endless tunnel of mysteries.”