“You mean the wall?” said Bowser.
“Maybe it was the wall.” She didn’t think the wall was what she meant. The idea that a circle had spoken to her had only just come to her and, infuriatingly, it was wriggling away already.
“Then—” Miss Flivvers looked like someone desperately trying to keep up. “Can’t you ask the circle how to do the spell? Not that it isn’t rather forward on your part to ask—”
“I can’t ask it,” said Chantel. “It was telling me stuff, but once we were through and the button closed, it stopped telling me.”
“Chantel, you interrupted me. I am becoming very concerned about your deportment.”
Chantel ignored this. “Anyway, the main problem is what we do when the patriarchs get here.”
“What if we told them we were still looking for the spell?” said Anna. “What if you gave them the rhyme, and —there’s that bit about lost lore, right?”
“What are you girls talking about?” said Miss Flivvers.
“‘This remains from long lost lore. The rest is gone. We know no more,’” Holly recited.
“When we did prognostication with Miss Ellicott, and you saw into the Ago—” said Anna.
“I just saw a bleeding crown,” said Chantel. “That’s no help.”
“But you really can see the Ago,” said Anna. “Not like the rest of us. If you could convince the patriarchs that you were looking in the Ago for the right way to do the Buttoning, then maybe they’d leave us alone while you looked. And that would give us time to find the sorceresses.”
“How can we find them?” said Chantel. “Lord Rudolph says the Marauders without the gates took them.”
Miss Flivvers gasped in dismay. “Marauders! Poor Euphonia!”
“Who’s Euphonia?” said Bowser.
“Miss Ellicott to you,” said Miss Flivvers. “Oh, poor dear Miss Ellicott, alone with all those hairy, unwashed Marauders!”
“She’s not alone. They took all of them,” said Chantel.
“And we do bathe,” said Franklin.
Miss Flivvers turned on him. “Well, young man? Where have you taken them?”
“Nowhere,” said Franklin.
“There are different kinds of Marauders, Miss Flivvers,” said Chantel.
Miss Flivvers shuddered at the thought. “How do you intend to find out which ones have taken poor Miss Ellicott, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Chantel. “But if we tell Lord Rudolph I’m searching the past for the spell, that will at least give us time to look.”
“Seems like that would work for a while,” said Franklin. “But eventually you’d have to come up with a spell.”
“Well, so we would come up with it,” said Anna. “If Chantel looks through the Ago, maybe she can find the long lost lore—”
“This is only going to work,” said Bowser, “if Chantel can stop acting like she has a snake in her head.”
“True,” said Anna. “Chantel, you need to use your deportment.”
“That was precisely my point,” said Miss Flivvers sniffily.
“I mean use it,” said Anna, frowning at Miss Flivvers.
“But,” said Chantel. “If they get hold of the whole spell and figure out how to do it, then they’ll strengthen Seven Buttons, which is the exact opposite of what the Marauders told them to do, and the Marauders will kill Miss Ellicott and all the other sorceresses.”
“What?” cried Miss Flivvers. “Chantel, you can’t possibly know this.”
“I do, because I asked Lord Rudolph. He told us that the sorceresses had been kidnapped by the Marauders,” said Chantel. “And that the Marauders want the wall taken down, or they won’t return them alive.”
“You questioned Lord Rudolph?” Miss Flivvers looked shocked. “Chantel, I want you to recite for me, right now, the 42 Rules of Hierarchy and the 19 Signs of Modesty.”
Chantel ignored this. “Miss Flivvers, don’t be so—so helpless. Please. We need you to act like a grown-up when the patriarchs come. Let us do the talking but . . . but act like a grown-up. Because if you don’t—” She thought of a threat that might work. “Mrs. Warthall will come back.”
Miss Flivvers looked horrified. She began to sob softly.
Chantel remembered that Miss Flivvers had once said something quite spirited to Miss Ellicott about pedestals. There had to be more to Miss Flivvers than met the eye.
Chantel hoped it would show up soon.
From down below, there came a knock at the street door.
11
THE BATTLE OF MISS ELLICOTT’S SCHOOL
It was not so much a knock as a banging, a pounding, a yanking, a thoroughgoing effort to rip the door from its hinges.
The crowd of girls parted to let Chantel through. She opened the door.
Four city guards stood on the steps, resplendent in the purple uniform of the Order of Watchful Sentinels of Lightning Pass. They wore swords and daggers and carried spears tipped with shiny-sharp blades.
“Yes?” said Chantel.
“You’re under arrest,” said the captain of the sentinels.
He made a grab at Chantel. They all watched as his arm hit an invisible rubbery wall and bounced back.
Of course, he was the sort of person who doesn’t feel he has to believe something just because it’s happened. He shot his arm out again, and it came boinging back and punched him in the nose. The smaller girls laughed, and Chantel heard Anna behind her hushing them.
“Please tell Lord Rudolph,” said Chantel, “that I have an offer to make.”
Instead of answering, the captain surged through the doorway—for about two feet. Then the shield bounced him back, throwing him down the steps to land on his rear in the street.
Again Anna hushed the little girls’ laughter.
“Please tell the patriarchs—” said Chantel firmly.
The captain was back on the top step. “You there, boy! What’s your name?”
“Me? Bowser.”
“Can you make these girls see sense?”
“No sir,” said Bowser.
The man cursed, and turned to Franklin. “What’s your name?”
“He can’t talk,” said Bowser hurriedly. “He’s my cousin. His name’s Rob.”
“Well, I have no orders to arrest him,” said the captain. “He can be in charge of the females until we send another manageress to look after them.”
“You’re not arresting anybody,” said Chantel, struggling for deportment. The snake inside her head was wriggling furiously. “You can’t come in here, so you can’t arrest us. We’ll only talk to Lord Rudolph. Please send him up here.”
And she closed the door gently, although the snake was urging her to slam it.
She looked around her. Miss Flivvers had stayed upstairs.
It became a very long day.
More guards arrived—dozens of guards. They tried all the windows and doors, including the roof door, which they reached by dropping down from the roof of the house above. They tried to knock bricks out of the wall, which really worried Chantel, and she had to run around putting wards on the walls themselves.