Winter's Tale (2 page)

Girls like her weren’t easily unnerved, but
those strange fantasies did the trick. The images didn’t feel like
they came from her own head. Shaken, December hastily pushed back .
. . and fell onto her butt.

She’d forgotten the inches between the base
of the statue and the hard ground.

The unexpected drop jolted more adrenaline
through her, confusing her perceptions as much as the moonlight.
Did the statue’s lips appear slightly parted? Was that a
flush
washed across their stone? The color ebbed even as she
questioned its existence. She’d seen a shadow, a trick of the eye
or brain.

Heart pounding, face hot, she scrambled onto
her feet again.

“Just a shadow,” she said.

She couldn’t have explained why, but her gaze
slid to the statue’s carved fig leaf. Her imagination must still
have been running riot. The leaf seemed to thrust out farther than
before, seemed in truth to curve over a noticeably un-modest
bulge.

How long did statues need to get full
erections?

“Idiot,” December snorted.

New schools always required a period of
psychological adjustment—wondering how long she’d take to get
settled, if she’d make allies or enemies. Then came the issue of
how many months she’d last before she ran afoul of the wrong person
and was chucked out. If that didn’t strain a person’s brain, she
didn’t know what would.

Tugging down the hem of her coat, she swiped
leaves off her backside. Nerves now under better control, she
offered the statue a two-fingered mock salute. Then she turned on
her heel to go.

Save me
, rustled a whisper as soft as
the wind wearing deeper grooves in the old gravestones. December’s
stride hesitated, but she refused to spin around.

Statues didn’t whisper. As to that, they
didn’t blush or get boners. She was alone out here. Her emotions
were simply wrought up and confusing her.

I don’t hear you
, she thought for good
measure.

She hurried back to the prison she’d so
recently wanted to escape.

~

December didn’t get a chance to question her
fellow inmates until lunch the following day. She carried her tray
to the table for popular girls. Over the years, she’d learned if
she acted like the elite, her chances of fitting in improved
greatly. Rackham’s inner circle wasn’t nearly as tough as some
she’d cracked. The half dozen girls gaped at her for sitting
without permission, then launched into the usual inquisitional
ritual. Soon enough they determined that,
yes
, her folks had
money and,
no
, she didn’t have a boyfriend—a deficiency
females who had one generally seemed to enjoy.

December didn’t pretend she’d gone off boys.
That sounded too much like an excuse, like she couldn’t bag a beau
if she wanted to. To claim she hadn’t found one lately whom she
considered worth chasing would only brand her a liar
and
a
loser. Predictably, her interrogators also had to ask if her riot
of long blonde curls was naturally that color.

December confirmed it was, but didn’t hold
her breath on being taken at her word.

“Switzerland,” repeated a slender girl with
shiny straight brown hair. Her name was Nina and her clothes were
impeccable. Her parents might not want her around, but they weren’t
shorting her wardrobe allowance. December remembered mentioning her
last school was in Lucerne.

“The mountains were pretty,” she said,
realizing she was addressing the queen bee. “And the food was
better than here.”

“That’s no feat,” commented another girl,
prodding her mystery meat with a fork. None of the popular girls
were eating. Between the six of them, they barely had ten fat
cells. Compared to them, December’s curvaceous body was exotic.

“Tell me about the graveyard,” she said,
judging she’d passed muster sufficiently to pose her own
question.

An attractive redhead whose name December
hadn’t caught leaned over her untouched tray. “It’s haunted,” she
confided with ghoulish enjoyment.

December bit into an apple, which was
surprisingly sweet and crisp. She decided she’d stick to fruit
until she was certain the meals were edible. “People have seen
ghosts in the cemetery?”

“Well, no,” the redhead admitted. “But
everyone who goes there get shivers.”

“The graveyard is
weird
.” This
declaration came from Nina’s flunky, Alicia, and was underscored by
a nod. “You think you’re just strolling into a little place, but
somehow you never come to the end of it.”

“Like the Tardis,” December said, gratified
to know she wasn’t the only one.

“The what?” Alicia’s mouth hung open like a
doll’s. A mental giant she was not.

“The phone box on
Doctor Who
. Bigger
on the inside than on the out.”

“We don’t watch that show,” the redhead
informed her with a snooty toss of her head.

“That’s too bad,” December responded. “I
think people should choose what they like for themselves.” She
added a tiny smile to the calm response, silently telling the girl
she knew her opinion didn’t matter. As expected, the redhead
dropped her eyes.

Simple anthropology
, December thought.
Confident monkeys climbed taller trees.

“What about the statue?” she asked aloud.

“The naked guy?” Alicia shivered and said
brr
. “I heard he killed someone.”

“I heard he strangled a herd of cats,” said
another.

“No, he ditched his fiancée at the altar, and
she leaped to her death from the clock tower in Kingaken.”

December glanced at Nina, but the top girl
didn’t jump into the chorus. That was disappointing. She was the
one December hoped might know.

“Does he have a name?” she asked. If he did,
she could research his past herself.

“His name is Hans,” Nina said, parting with
the information reluctantly. Her gaze locked on December’s. Her
eyes were dark like her hair and very beautiful. For a hanging
second, December had the impression no one but the two of them
existed.

“Hans what?” she pressed.

Nina’s flashing eyes hardened. “You should
stay away from him.”

“Why?” December asked softly. A taunt she
couldn’t quite control crept into her tone. “He’s only a statue.
Surely he can’t hurt me.”

The queen bee pressed her lips together,
possibly annoyed by the insinuation of cowardice. “You already know
why,” she said, her voice as quiet as her challenger’s.

A tingle slid across December’s shoulders,
obliging her to grit her teeth or risk the reaction turning into a
shiver for all to see. Had Nina slipped out alone to visit the
statue? Had she also been tempted to kiss its lips? December
thought she saw genuine fear behind the badass warning Nina was
trying to give. What had happened to the girl when she’d ventured
into that still graveyard?

“It’s just a statue,” she repeated.

To her amazement, Nina slid her untouched
tray away on the table, rose stiffly in her Manolos, and clicked
off.

Her coterie gawked at her departure.
Apparently, this wasn’t normal behavior for their liege. They took
a moment to recover, after which they pelted December even more
unabashedly with questions about Switzerland and skiing and which
designers Europeans were wearing on the slopes.

December enjoyed being the center of
attention, but knew it wouldn’t last. Maintaining a circle of
sycophants took time and determination she didn’t have. Girls like
Nina were better suited for it. They believed being top monkey was
worth something.

Hans
, December mused with an
unoccupied corner of her mind.

She might doubt lots of things in this world,
but not that Nina was right about the name.

~

Getting kicked out of French class after
lunch was a breeze. The instructor’s command of the Gallic language
was shaky, to say the least. Muttering corrections of her tenses
beneath her breath achieved December’s goal handily.

“Go then, if you’re so clever,” the weary
woman said. “Bring me a short biography of Victor Hugo before start
of class tomorrow. A thousand words . . .
en francais, s'il vous
plait
.”

Since this was an assignment she could do in
her sleep, December curtsied and said
merci
.

The dusty computer lab was between the
student’s common room and the library. The units were five years
old, but they accessed the Internet. To her delight, the
Kingaken Courier
’s digitized records went back to the 1850s.
A search of earlier articles for anyone named Hans got results. A
farmer by that name won a plowing race at a fair. Another, a
blacksmith, had a daughter who married the mayor of Kingaken’s son.
Two different Hans’s in two different years crashed their jalopies
into the same pharmacy’s storefront. Sadly, none of these men
seemed likely to have been the subject of the statue. Her Hans was
handsome, and he’d had some big scandal attached to him. The
examples she uncovered were unremarkable.

She came up short on her other searches as
well. Clearly, local records didn’t cover what she was looking for.
Was her mystery man older than they were? Did he perhaps predate
the cemetery and the school?

I have to sneak out to him again
, she
thought.
See if I can find more clues
.

She gripped the edge of the dinged-up carrel
in which she worked. She didn’t think she was afraid to return. To
be honest, as she sat there staring sightlessly at the wall, she
wanted to squirm in her chair for different reasons than
nervousness.

~

Rackham’s architects must have believed
privacy led young ladies into temptation. The dormitory housed
girls in groups of ten. Hospital-style curtains separated narrow
beds, each of which were supplemented by a wardrobe, a nightstand,
and a chest for sitting on or storing possession. Despite the
equalizing effect of uniform furnishings, Rackham’s students found
ways to declare which rung of the ladder they wished to claim.

Nina, December noted, slept in an
honest-to-God Parisian lace peignoir. At the moment, she was rather
ostentatiously pretending to be unconscious. December expected this
was because she herself was undressed.

She smiled with private amusement as she
donned a pair of white-piped dark gray pajamas. She hadn’t missed
that every open eye in the place was checking out her figure. Her
mother often tried to make December feel bad about her body. They
saw each other maybe once a year, and the first words out of her
mouth would be, “Good Lord, December, those pants make your hips
look enormous.” Meredith Worth didn’t realize that, in all their
time apart, December had made peace with her own lushness. She was
healthy, and boys liked the way she looked. More importantly, she
was fine with it herself. Whatever Nina’s clique of twigs might
whisper behind their hands, she knew some part of them was
jealous.

I’m what they won’t let themselves be
,
she thought.

She climbed into bed and dug out her
e-reader. Lights Out was harder to enforce in the age of
batteries.

“Aren’t you sneaking out?” a hopeful voice
whispered from the bed opposite hers.

Her questioner was Alicia, Nina’s faithful
second in command.

“Not tonight,” she said truthfully. She
planned her next visit to the graveyard for daylight, when her eyes
and emotions were less apt to play pranks on her.

Alicia’s covers rustled as she worked up the
nerve to speak again. When she did, her words rushed out
breathlessly. “Is it true you were caught sucking off the
headmistress’s nephew at your last school?”

December tossed her curls and grinned.
“Nothing of the sort,” she said. “He was caught sucking me.”

Alicia’s gasp of reaction was everything
she’d hoped for.

DECEMBER
set her plan into motion
early the next morning. Miss Westin, the French teacher, had an
office in the opposite wing from the library. December intended to
slip her whipped-up paper on Victor Hugo under the door. That
demand satisfied, she hoped not to get into too much trouble for
skipping class again.

She’d rather not be tossed out of Rackham
before solving its mystery.

“Huh,” she said when she arrived at her
destination. Miss Westin’s door had the first decent lock she’d
seen at the school.

December’s inner felon itched to take a crack
at it.

That challenge would have to wait until she
saw to other priorities. Crouching, she started to shove her report
under the narrow gap.

“
Entree
,” Miss Westin said as she
did.

December straightened, mouthed a curse, and
opened the dark-stained door. Miss Westin turned in a creaky
banker’s chair and looked up at her.

“Sorry,” December said. “I didn’t know you
were here.”

With the exception of a small square window,
the little office was lined from floor to ceiling with jammed
bookshelves. Most of the books were old. Few seemed to deal with
the French language, which might explain why the teacher’s grasp of
it was weak. Apparently, Miss Westin had a fixation with folklore
and fairytales. She could have stocked an antique bookstore with
her supply. December longed to cough at the musty smell the pages
exuded, but worried that would insult the instructor.

Shifting her gaze to Miss Westin’s desk, she
saw it rivaled the shelves for clutter. Its surface was piled with
papers and what appeared to be girl’s journals. A number of them
were pink and studded with cheap crystals. December couldn’t
imagine they were the teacher’s. Had Miss Westin confiscated them
from her students for some reason?

December didn’t ask. Questions were for
people who wanted to give away their thoughts. Miss Westin might
suck at French, but that didn’t mean she was a fool.