Felicity loops her arm through mine, whispers low. “Don’t look so grim. They’re harmless, really.”
I shake my arm free. “They are the hounds of hell. Could you call them off, please?”
Cecily giggles. “Careful, Felicity, she might use her evil eye against us.”
Even Felicity can’t keep from sputtering with laughter. I wish I could use my evil eye. Or at least my evil boot right smack against Cecily’s backside.
Miss Moore leads us back into the daylight and through the woods by a different path, which takes us to a small dirt road. Across the low stone wall that borders the road, I can see a Gypsy caravan nestled in the trees beyond. Felicity is suddenly by my side, using the advantage of my height to hide her from view, in case Ithal is near.
“Ann, I think Miss Moore wants you,” she says. Ann obeys, huffing in her ungainly way toward our teacher. “Gemma, please don’t be cross.” Felicity peeks her head out, searching. “Do you see him?”
There’s nothing out there but three wagons and a few horses. “No,” I answer in a surly tone.
“Thank the gods.” She links her arm through mine, oblivious to my bad temper. “That would have been awkward. Can you imagine?” She’s trying to win me over with her charm. It is working. I smile in spite of myself and she shares one of those rare, ripe grins that seem to make the world a fun, inviting place.
“Listen, I’ve got a capital idea. Why don’t we form our own order?”
I stop cold. “And do what?”
“Live.”
Relieved, I start walking again. “We’re already living.”
“No. We’re playing their predetermined little game. But what if we had a place where we played by no one’s rules but our own?”
“And where, pray tell, would we do that?”
Felicity looks around. “Why not meet here at the caves?”
“You’re joking,” I say. “You are joking, aren’t you?”
She shakes her head. “Just think of it: We’d make our own plans, wield our own influence, have a bit of fun while we can. We would own Spence.”
“We’d be expelled, that’s what.”
“We’re not going to get caught. We’re far cleverer than that.”
Up ahead, Cecily is prattling on to Elizabeth, who seems very distressed that her boots are getting muddy. I throw Felicity a look.
“They’re not so bad once you get to know them.”
“I’m sure the piranha fish is nice to its family, too, but I don’t want to get too close to it.”
Ann looks back at me, slack-jawed. She’s just discovered that Miss Moore didn’t want her after all. No one does. That’s the trouble. But perhaps there is a way to change that. “All right,” I say. “I’m game, with one provision.”
“Name it.”
“You have to invite Ann.”
Felicity can’t decide whether to laugh or spit venom at me. “You can’t be serious.” When I don’t answer, she says, “I won’t do it.”
“As I recall, you owe me a debt.”
She gives me a smirk meant to dismiss the whole idea. “The other girls won’t allow it. You know that, don’t you?”
“That shall be your dilemma,” I can’t help adding with a smile. “Don’t look so grim. They’re harmless. Really.”
Felicity narrows her eyes and marches off to catch Pippa, Elizabeth, and Cecily. In a moment, they’re arguing, with Elizabeth and Cecily shaking their heads and Felicity huffing her displeasure. For her part, Pippa just seems glad to have Felicity’s attention. In a moment, Felicity is back by my side, fuming.
“Well?”
“I told you—they won’t allow her in. She’s not of their class.”
“Sorry to hear your little club is doomed before it starts,” I say, feeling a bit smug.
“Did I say it was off? I know I can sway Pippa. Cecily’s gotten too arrogant these days. I brought her along from nothing. If she and Elizabeth think they can make a go of it at this school without my influence, they are sadly mistaken.”
I’ve underestimated Felicity’s need for control. She’d rather be seen with Ann and me than admit defeat to her acolytes. She’s an admiral’s daughter, after all.
“When should we meet?”
“Tonight at midnight,” Felicity says.
I’m fairly certain this will all lead to shame, misfortune, and at the very least, having to listen to Pippa go on to the point of queasiness about the romantic ideal of love, but at least they’ll have to stop tormenting Ann for a bit.
At the bend in the road, Ithal is there. Felicity stops suddenly, like a horse spooked. She holds tight to my arm, refusing to look in his direction.
“Dear God,” she gasps.
“He wouldn’t dare to speak to you in the open, would he?” I whisper, while trying to ignore Felicity’s fingernails dug deep into my arm.
Ithal stops to pluck a flower from the ground. Singing, he hops up onto the wall and presents it to Felicity as if I’m not standing between the two of them at all. The others stop and turn to see what the fuss is about. They gasp and titter, both shocked and delighted by the scene. Felicity keeps her head low and stares at the ground.
Miss Moore seems amused. “I believe you have an admirer, Felicity.”
The girls look from Ithal to Felicity and back again, watching and waiting.
Ithal extends the flower to her. It’s there in his fingers, red and fragrant. “Beauty for beauty,” he says in his low growl of a voice.
I can hear Cecily whispering, “The nerve,” under her breath. Felicity’s face is a stone as she tosses the flower to the ground. “Miss Moore, can’t we clean out these woods of all this riffraff? It’s a blight.” Her words are a slap. She raises her skirts delicately with her hands, steps on the flower, crushing it with her boot, and races ahead of the pack. The others fall in behind her.
I can’t help feeling humiliated for Ithal. He stands at the wall and watches us go, and when we reach the turnoff for the school, he’s still there with the mangled flower in his hand, far behind us, a small, dying star fading out of our constellation.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WE SNEAK OUT JUST PAST MIDNIGHT, WEAVING through the woods by lantern light till we’re deep inside the dark womb of the caves. Felicity lights candles she’s stolen from a cupboard. Within minutes, the place is alight, the drawings dancing again on the rocky walls. In the eerie glow, the skulls of the Morrigan twist and bend like living things till I have to look away.
“Ugh, it’s so damp in here,” Pippa says, sitting gingerly on the cave floor. Felicity has managed to talk her into coming, and all she’s done so far is complain about everything. “Did anyone think to bring food? I’m famished.”
Her gaze falls on Ann, who has pulled an apple from her cape pocket. It sits in Ann’s hand while she debates which will win, her hunger or her need to belong. After an excruciating minute she offers it to Pippa. “You could have my apple.”
“I suppose it will have to do,” Pippa says with a sigh. She reaches for it, but Felicity grabs first.
“Not yet. We have to do this properly. With a toast.”
There’s a gleam in Felicity’s eye as she reaches into her shift and pulls out the bottle of communion wine. Pippa’s squeals of delight fill the cavernous space. She throws her arms around Felicity. “Oh, Fee, you’re brilliant!”
“Yes, I am rather, aren’t I?”
I want to remind them that I’m the one who risked life, limb, soul, and explusion to get the wine, but I know it would be pointless and I’d just look sullen.
“What’s that?” Ann says.
Felicity rolls her eyes. “Cod-liver oil. What do you think it is?”
The color leaks from Ann’s face. “It’s not spirits, is it?”
Pippa clutches at her throat melodramatically. “Heavens, no!”
Ann is just realizing what she’s in for. She tries to make light of the situation by putting the joke on someone else. “Ladies don’t drink spirits,” she says, mimicking Mrs. Nightwing’s plummy tones. It’s a dead-on imitation, and we all laugh. Thrilled, Ann repeats the joke again and again till it’s gone from amusing to irritating.