The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (29 page)

As she was finishing, footsteps echoed around the corner. Glancing down the hall, Rachel was both delighted and annoyed to see Gaius Valiant. He looked so adorable as he walked toward her that she nearly forgot her anger, but the idea that he might have betrayed her stung. She turned her back and quickly took off in the other direction.

“Rachel. What’s wrong?” Gaius quickened his step until he fell in beside her. His stride was much longer than hers.

She turned on him. “You told, didn’t you? After you promised not to. You told them about the princess’s visions!”

“No!”

“But Cydney and the others. They knew all about them!”

“They didn’t hear it from me,” he insisted hotly. “I did not even tell…I didn’t tell anybody.” Returning to his normal calm, he held up his hands and drawled, “I said nothing. Not a word, not so much as a single syllable.”

Rachel looked at him long and hard. He endured her scrutiny.

“So? What’s your decision?” He searched her face. “Are we still on for tonight?”

Rachel sighed and nodded. “I believe you.”

Looking very pleased, he gave her a mock bow. “I will not disappoint, milady.”

Rachel laughed, suddenly aware that her hair was, as always, flying every which way. She ran her hands over it, trying to push some of the escaping locks back into the twist at the back of her head, but to no avail.

“So they found out?” Gaius leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.

“Yes, and about Zoë, too…something I really, really wish had stayed a secret.” She sighed. “I had had such plans for her.”

“That she can walk through dreams? I heard about that. Yeah, that’s big. I’ve never even heard of such a thing. Even familiars can only reach into the shallows of dreams. Any other big news? I heard you fought a wraith!” He looked impressed.

Rachel grinned. “Got sipped on by one is more like it. The boys you told me about—the vampire hunters from Dare?—They fought it. Siggy and Lucky—Sigfried’s dragon. Lucky would have got it right off, had the Raven not come and turned him into a dumb beast.”

“Raven?”

Rachel looked around and then spoke in a hushed voice. “There is a giant Raven that flies around on campus invisibly. When he comes near Lucky…it’s like he becomes a local dragon, a creature who cannot talk.” Oddly, she thought suddenly, that had not happened to the little lion when the Raven spoke to him. “Nighthawk says the Raven is an omen of the Death of Worlds.”

“That’s…scary.” Gaius’s eyebrows drew together.

“Yes, it is.”

“We’ve got to find out more,” he said.

Rachel smiled. She liked his attitude.

“Yes, we do!”

“Must go study.” He saluted. “See you after dinner?”

“Sure thing.” Rachel stepped over and kissed him on the cheek. “See you then!”

She ran off without looking back.

There was still fifteen minutes until the dining room opened for dinner. Rachel wandered into the walled garden and found Valerie Hunt threading film into her camera. Payback lay near her feet, panting. As she leaned over to pet the Norwegian Elk Hound’s thick fur, it occurred to Rachel that she and Valerie were much alike, both brainy and inquisitive.

It would be nice to be better friends with the girl Siggy liked. Rachel sat down next to Valerie and gave her a hopeful smile. For a second, nothing happened. Rachel remembered her attempt to befriend Cydney Graves and wished that she had not smiled. Then, to her relief, Valerie smiled back.

“It’s so weird to be doing this.” Valerie snapped the back of her camera shut and turned the crank twice. “I feel like I’m in an old movie. It’s a good thing our Photography Club had access to a darkroom. I considered it a historical oddity at the time. But now I’m really glad I took the class on using film.”

Rachel blinked. “What else would you use?”

Valerie looked up in surprise. Then, a quirky smile caught her lip. “You Wiseborn are so cute. Most cameras are digital now.”

Rachel frowned. “You mean…like a computer.”

“Basically. Yeah.”

“Oh.” Rachel had trouble caring about mundane things. It was the only part of
knowing
everything
she did not find interesting. “So, you’ve been here at school a few days. How do you like it?”

Valerie crinkled her nose and gave Rachel a tiny, sad smile. “I feel…humbled.”

“Humbled?” Rachel leaned against the wall, batting at the purple wisteria blossoms that had snagged her hair. “Why is that?”

“Back at home, I was street savvy.” Valerie smiled sheepishly. “I was Miss Connected. My mother’s a reporter, and my dad’s a cop. I did jobs for my parents, investigated, went places no adult could get away with going. Made friends with people everyone else would rather not know. So I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. Plus, I knew how to do research. I was the Girl on the Street. I knew how stuff worked.

“Here at Roanoke, I know nothing. Outside the Iscariots, I have no connections in the World of the Wise. I don’t even know what’s physically possible and what’s not. I feel like one of those tuna that has just been flipped out of the water onto a fisherman’s ship and is now wriggling around on the deck. I might have been a master in the ocean. Up here, I’m just cat food.”

“That would be disconcerting.” Rachel sat down on the bench. “So you worked for your father the detective and your mother the reporter? Is that how you found the dead body? Siggy said you found one. He seemed…impressed.”

Valerie turned slightly green. “No. It wasn’t anything like that. True, I slummed around with lowlifes for my parents, looking for clues as to who was distributing drugs at school. Caught the perp, too.” She grinned wickedly. “Go me! But the body thing was quite different. I was rowing with my crew team, and we found something floating in the water. Turned out to be a dead body…the body of my and Salome’s other bestie, Lilly Pfeiffer. The previous year, her whole family had been murdered…in front of her eyes. I guess it was just too much for her. She committed suicide. Drowned herself in the river.”

“One of your best friends! And you’re the one who found her. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey. It happens. That was the case my father was working on when he disappeared—who murdered Lilly’s family.” Valerie brushed her hair from her eyes and held up her camera. “Say cheese!”

Rachel gave her a big smile, holding two fingers up in a V beside her face.

Valerie snapped a picture and laughed. “Oh, that’s so cute! You look like an anime girl.”

“A what?”

“A Japanese cartoon girl. They do that finger thing when they have their pictures taken.”

“I got that from my mother and my sisters. They always do it.”

“Must be an Asian thing.”

“Could be.” Rachel shrugged. “I’m one-eighth Korean.”

Valerie hooked her camera back onto the red strap she wore over her shoulder. It hung above her hip. “Sad about the snitch, isn’t it? Joy told me.”

Rachel smoothed the pleats of her robe, frowning. “I love sharing secrets. I can’t do that if the stuff we know has already been spilled—to people who might use it against us.”

“I’ve been making a list of suspects,” Valerie held up her notebook, “but so far, I haven’t found anything conclusive. This is assuming, of course, that a person told the students in Drake—rather than that they spied on us with magic or discerned it with augury,” her face twitched oddly, “which is possible in the magical world, isn’t it? Remember what I said about not knowing the laws of nature?”

Rachel shivered. If one of Cydney’s friends or acquaintances had a device like Sigfried’s amulet, how could she and her friends discuss anything safely?

“What you said about not having enough information…” Rachel pulled her legs up on the bench beside her and hugged her knees. “It is the same with the other matters we’re investigating. We have all these pieces of information, but no leads. Nothing we can act on. You’re the genius reporter. Any ideas?”

“Honestly? I haven’t found out very much. There is no Internet here. No computers upon which to practice my Google Fu. Did I mention I have a black belt in that esteemed art?”

Rachel giggled. “I have no idea what that means, but…I’m sorry?”

“Why is it that technology doesn’t work here?” Valerie grabbed her short blond hair and moaned. “The very concept doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Because the inanimate world is more awake,” Rachel explained. “It works the other way, too. In areas of heavy technology, magic is more difficult. Sometimes, cantrips stop working altogether. The world believes it is mechanical and just won’t listen to sorcerers.”

“Can anything be done?” Valerie asked. “More insulation? Ablative shielding?”

“That’s what Ouroboros Industries is working on.”

“It’s so weird that they are part of the World of the Wise.” Valerie did a sort of a shivery dance. “Creepy! At home, our dishwasher is an O.I. It’s like finding out that Sears is run by the Seven Dwarves or something.”

Rachel nodded. “O.I.’s trying to find ways to get the two worlds to work together.”

“I hope they succeed. Quickly!” Valerie declared. She sighed and put her journal down on the bench. “I don’t have any idea how to proceed. I didn’t even know about magic till Salome told me over the summer. I am still trying to learn what is
normal
magic, and what is
weird
. So far, Nastasia’s visions are under ‘weird’, as is Sigfried’s dragon, and this Raven.”

They spoke for a time, discussing the princess’s encounter with the Lightbringer entity, the Raven’s effect on Lucky, and how nice it would be to have their own furry dragon. Payback lifted her head and whined. Valerie petted her fondly.

“What’s next?” she asked.

“Oh! And someone’s trying to kill you,” Rachel said. “Do we have any leads on that?”

Valerie got a strange look on her face, as if she were trying to control her expression the way Rachel and her mother did, but was unable to do so. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. Her lip quivered a bit. Rachel felt terrible. She wished she had not brought up the topic.

Valerie’s voice was mostly under control, wobbling only a little. “My contacts among the Agents have assured me that Roanoke Academy is the safest place for me—other than sitting in the Wisecraft office, which might be interesting at first, but would probably get boring once I realized that keeping me safe did not include letting me in on Agent business. I have no idea if any of our fellow students are in the know—but if so, I haven’t ferreted them out.”

“So you haven’t found anything useful?” Rachel asked, disappointed. She had not known what could be learned by talking to their fellow students. But since Valerie had been bothering to try, Rachel had imagined she was a super sleuth who could solve any mystery from the tiniest of clues. She was chagrined to discover that the girl reporter had detected nothing.

“I didn’t find anything I was looking for. All I learned was a bit of gossip.”

“Oh, what was that?”

“This is old news, but it may be new to you, since you’re new here. There was a big stir when Colleen MacDannan picked Drake Hall. The MacDannans have always been in Dare. The kids from Dare and Drake Halls were all in an uproar when it happened, four years ago.”

“The MacDannans are famous Irish enchanters. Three of the Six Musketeers were MacDannans,” Rachel said.

She wondered glumly if it would have caused the same kind of fuss had she moved into Dee. Probably not, because there was a direct rivalry between Dare and Drake, the same as between Marlowe and De Vere and between Raleigh and Dee. Moving from Dare to Drake would make a much bigger stir than Dare to Dee.

Valerie continued, “I also found out that the Starkadder family—the royal family of Transylvania—is notorious for backstabbing and in-fighting. Many among the Wise are amazed the children have been so well-behaved here at the school.”

Rachel nodded. She had heard such stories.

Valerie blushed and added, “You found out things that affect the whole world, and I found out old rumors. Great. You should have asked Penny Royal to be your friend. She’s a girl in my dorm who’s an amateur detective.” She sighed.

“What about that Strega guy?” Rachel asked suddenly. “What did you learn from him?”

“Who?” Valerie frowned.

“A guy who Gai…who Evil Rumor Monger Number One reported having seen you talk to. His name was Jonah Strega.”

“I never talked to a guy with a name like that. I don’t know who your Evil Rumor Monger is talking about.”

“Maybe you didn’t get the guy’s name. He is supposed to be kind of creepy.”

“I would have remembered talking to someone who was creepy. And I wrote down everyone’s name.” Valerie pulled out her notebook and flipped through it. “Strega. Strega. Nope. I never talked to this guy.”

“Huh…” Rachel’s brow furrowed. “Why would ERM #1 claim you did? What could he possibly gain from that?”

“Don’t know. Maybe he wants you not to trust me?”

“But…” Rachel scrunched up her face, puzzled. “It doesn’t make any sense.” Something tugged at her memory. She reeled it backwards. Pieces snapped into place. “You know what’s weird? Earlier, in the library, someone asked Charybdis Nutt about her conversation with a guy named Jonah. She claimed she had not talked to him, either. I thought at the time that she was just being coy, but…”

“That is weird.” Valerie looked disturbed. Her hound raised its head, alert. “You know…what if there is no spy? What if…” A frightened look came over Valerie’s face. “Okay, I’ll watch out for anything odd. Er, I have to go, I’ll talk to you later.”

She gathered her things, whistled to her dog, and hurried off, her eyes unnaturally shiny. Rachel watched her glumly. She had great sympathy for someone who did not want to cry in front of other people, and she felt bad about having upset Valerie.

As dinner came to an end, Gaius appeared beside her, looking quite handsome despite his patched robes. He bowed and offered his arm. Rising, Rachel accepted, inwardly delighted by the surprised looks on her friends’ faces. He took her out of Roanoke Hall and across the bridge over the reflecting lake toward the gymnasium. The sun was setting. Brilliant fiery colors painted the western sky and seemed to ignite the waters beneath the bridge. Rachel walked beside him, very aware of the place where his arm touched hers. She felt slightly breathless.