“A murder!” Vionetta Sharp said with a quick intake of breath. She had come to a stop a few feet ahead where the road curved just before the gate to Blythewood. She held out one arm to keep us back and with the other she reached forward to grab Miss Corey’s arm, her fingers digging deep into the other woman’s flesh.
“Ah yes,” Rupert Bellows said, ambling forward. “My favorite of the collective nouns. A murder of . . .” His voice died as he reached the two women. I edged forward to see what they were looking at.
They were staring at the gate to Blythewood. The black wrought-iron scrollwork stood out starkly against the indigo and violet sky, especially the spikes on top.
Only there hadn’t been spikes on the gate when we left this afternoon. I took a step closer and the spikes rustled. The top of the gate was lined with huge black crows, so packed together that they jostled against one another for purchase. There must have been fifty of them.
“Those . . . are . . . not . . .” Miss Sharp said slowly, carefully enunciating each word, “ordinary crows.” She turned her head to Miss Corey, who was staring at the gate. “Lillian, I am going to do a mesmerism spell. When I’ve drawn them away, take the girls and run to the hall.”
Miss Corey turned her head to her friend, opening her mouth to object, but she snapped it shut when she met Miss Sharp’s eyes. She nodded once and turned to us. Helen and Daisy had reached me now and stood on either side of me. I felt Daisy’s hand slip into mine as Miss Corey whispered to us.
“I want you three to stay perfectly still until I give you the signal. Then we will run straight for the house being very, very careful not to trip or to look back. Do you understand?”
We nodded our agreement. Helen grasped my hand and squeezed. I looked over Miss Corey’s head to Miss Sharp. She and Mr. Bellows were whispering together. Mr. Bellows reached into the pocket of his tweed coat and drew out a long silver dagger, its hilt decorated with opalescent stones, its blade inscribed with strange runic designs. He handed it, hilt first, to Miss Sharp with all the aplomb of a knight handing his sword to his lady in order to be knighted. The crows stirred on the gate, black feathers rustling against each other with a sound like dry paper crackling. Miss Sharp swung the dagger into the air in a long graceful arc, as if she were swinging a tennis racket back to serve. A hundred pairs of jet black eyes followed the motion. She swung the dagger back down and around, drawing great looping patterns in the air. The runic inscriptions on the blade seemed to dislodge from the blade and float free in the clear evening air . . .
“Don’t look at it,” Miss Corey hissed in my ear. “You’ll be mesmerized, too.”
I dragged my eyes away from Miss Sharp and looked at the crows. They were swaying in unison, their eyes following the motions Miss Sharp drew in the air . . . and then they rose from the gate in one long black stream, like smoke rising from a fire, and swooped toward Miss Sharp.
“Now!” Miss Corey shouted. “Run!”
We ran under a stream of crows, so thick in the air that they darkened the ground, through the gate. Miss Corey was ahead of us. Behind us I could hear the birds’ hoarse, raucous caws rending the air. There was something fierce in the sound—and angry—as if the crows knew they had been deceived. It seemed to grow as we ran instead of fading with the distance. Had Miss Sharp been successful in luring them away? Or were they following us? I itched to turn around and look, but Miss Corey had said not to.
We were climbing the rise, running so hard I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. Or was it the sound of the crows, gaining on us, about to swoop down and peck at the exposed flesh of our necks?
Daisy’s hand slipped from mine and she let out a sharp cry. Helen was pulling me forward, but I broke away and turned to see Daisy stumble and fall, a black shape beating about her head. I swatted the crow away and grabbed her hand. Something thumped hard against the back of my head. Daisy screamed and swung her reticule at the bird, but it clung to me, icy claws digging into the nape of my neck. I had the horrible feeling that the crow was clawing its way under my skin. I stumbled and began to fall, Daisy’s face and the world around me going black, my ears ringing . . .
Bells were ringing in my head, but they weren’t dispelling the cold wave rushing over my body, numbing me to the tips of my toes. I could see Daisy’s face above me, her eyes wide with horror, lips moving, but I couldn’t hear her. The world had gone quiet except for the bells. Dark shadows were creeping over the lawn where I lay, over Daisy’s face, across my eyes . . .
I fell into the darkness as though falling down a well. It was very cold and full of echoes. I heard voices—or rather one voice, a voice that was somehow familiar—chanting a singsong rhyme to the rhythm of the bells inside my head.
Violets and Monkshood
Say the bells of Blythewood . . .
It was the rhyme that Uncle Taddie had recited, but the next two lines were different.
Swallow the shadows down
To make them all drown.
Then the voice laughed—a horrible laugh that echoed in my ears. That’s what your mother did, only she was too late. The darkness was already inside her. Just as it’s inside you, Avaline Hall.
“No!” I screamed, thrashing out in the dark. “That’s not true!”
The well filled with the sound of beating wings. My hands struck against something smooth and . . . feathered. The talon grip on my neck suddenly loosened and melted like ice water rushing down my back—cold, but instead of numbing me, it woke me up. I opened my eyes.
I was looking up into a darkened face surrounded by a halo of light. Enormous black wings blocked out the sun. Dark shapes wheeled in the glare—as if feathers from those wings had been torn loose and sent spinning through space. I heard bells . . .
Only this time they weren’t in my head.
The winged creature turned his head to listen to them and I recognized his face in profile—the same face I’d seen carved white as a cameo, now carved out of ebony against the glare of the sun. It was the Darkling. My Darkling. He’d come for me—but what did he want?
His turned and his face was in shadow. I couldn’t see his expression, but I could tell from the bend of his head that he was looking at me. His gaze felt like a warm bath after the ice claws of the crow—a warmth that was healing me from the attack. I wanted to move closer to that warmth. I reached out and felt his hand grasp mine. The shock of warm solid flesh shattered the last shards of ice from my body. I rose feeling light and free.
Then his hand was wrenched out of mine and he spun around. There was a flash of steel, then wings beat the air and knocked me backward. I was blinded by the flurry of black feathers. When I opened my eyes Nathan was standing over me. He was holding a fire poker.
“Nathan! How . . . ? What . . . ?”
I wanted to ask why he’d attacked the Darkling who was saving me, but my lips were still numb, my body still weak from the alternating waves of ice and fire I’d just been through.
“I was on the roof when I saw those birds attack you,” Nathan cried, his voice full of the horror he must have felt at the sight. “I ran to the tower and rang the bells. It seemed to do the trick. They melted.”
“Melted?” I asked, recalling the sensation of freezing water running down my back and the long cold plunge into the dark well. My mouth was full of a coppery taste. Had they melted inside me? Had I swallowed them?
“But then when I got down here I saw that monster crouched over you. I hit him with this.” Nathan brandished the fire poker proudly, his face glowing. I’d never seen him with so much color in his face. Or looking so . . . happy. How could I tell him that the Darkling hadn’t been trying to hurt me? He’d been the one to save me from the crows. Or at least I’d thought he was saving me.
“And a jolly good job you did!” Rupert Bellows had reached us. He clapped Nathan on the back and then looked down at me. Miss Sharp ca
me up behind him and let out a little cry when she saw me. She knelt down and laid her hand on my forehead.
“Don’t just stand there, Rupert, help me carry Avaline inside.”
“I can walk,” I objected, although I was none too sure that I could. The thought of being carried by Mr. Bellows, though, made me go hot and cold all over. I struggled to my feet with Nathan’s and Miss Sharp’s help. Stinging prickles ran up my legs as though I was standing in a briar bush. Helen was suddenly there, slapping dust away from my skirt, tugging my waistband straight and patting my hair neat. Ordinarily I would object to her fussing, but her brisk hands were bringing life back to my limbs.
“When I looked back and saw that you’d fallen I ran right back. But then that monster landed . . .”
Why did they keep calling him a monster when he’d saved me? I tried to correct her, but Miss Sharp cried out.
“Where is Lillian?”
“She went on to the hall to tell Dame Beckwith what happened,” Helen said. “Look, they’re coming now.”
Everyone turned to the house except for me. I spied my posy of violets where it had fallen and knelt to pick it up. As I stood up I looked down the drive to the gate and felt my heart stutter in my chest.
Standing in the center of the open gates was a lone dark figure of a man in an Inverness cape.
“Look!” I said, turning to Nate. “It’s the man who was in the Wing & Clover.”
“What man?” Nate asked.
I turned back to point at the figure at the bottom of the hill but he was gone, melted away as quickly and completely as the murder of crows.
21
I WANTED NOTHING more than to go back to my room, wash my face, lie down, and think about what had happened in privacy. What were those crows? Were they the same ones I had seen circling the Triangle building the day of the fire? The Darkling had been there then, too—did he summon them? But it seemed that the Darkling had come to save me from the crows and I’d felt that rush of warmth in his presence. I’d wanted to go with him.
The confusion wasn’t just in my head—it seemed to be in my body. Alternating waves of hot and cold broke over me as I remembered in turn the icy grip of the crows’ talons and then the heat of the Darkling’s touch. But there was no time to sort through my warring feelings. We were summoned to Dame Beckwith’s study.
I’d passed the tall oak double doors to the headmistress’s study in the north wing a number of times on my way to classes and noticed that there always seemed to be a few girls fidgeting nervously on a long narrow bench waiting for the summons to enter. I had hoped I might never be one of them.
Expecting the room to be forbidding, I was relieved to find a charming study, lined with books and bathed in the last lingering light of the sunset. Glass doors led onto a balcony overlooking the river. The sun had sunk below the mountains on the other side of the river, turning the ridges deep blue and purple. Wisps of cloud flared pink and lilac above them. Glancing at them reminded me of the Darkling’s darkened face and the flash of his wings behind him. Those wings weren’t entirely black—they held the iridescent colors of the sunset in them.
I was startled out of my reverie by a touch of a hand—cooler than the Darkling’s hand and smaller, but no less firm in its grip. It was Dame Beckwith, who had risen from her desk and grasped my hand, her steady gray eyes gazing deeply into mine.
“Are you all right?” she asked me. “Are you sure you’ve come to no harm? I saw that monster hovering over you. I thought . . .” Her voice cracked. I was shocked to see her strong, firm jaw tremble as she fought back tears. “I thought we were going to lose you.”
“We might have if Nathan hadn’t rung the bells,” Miss Sharp said, stepping forward, “and attacked the Darkling.”
“It was just lucky I grabbed that poker,” Nathan said. “I ran down to fight the crows. I didn’t know the Darkling was there until I reached the lawn.”
“He wasn’t at first,” Miss Sharp said. “It was just the crows. But then he showed up.”
“It was when the crows attacked Ava,” Daisy said, her voice small in the presence of Dame Beckwith. “I saw that beastly crow sink its claws into Ava’s neck. I tried to get it off . . .” Daisy’s voice cracked.
I let go of Dame Beckwith’s hand and reached for Daisy. “You were so brave!” I said. “I saw you swing your reticule at the crows. And I know how much you love that bag!”
“It has all of Mr. Appleby’s letters in it!” she blurted out.
I stared at her for a moment, then felt something bubbling up inside of me. I wasn’t sure if I were going to laugh or cry until I heard Helen giggle, and then I began to laugh, too, helplessly and a little bit hysterically. The adults all stood around staring at us, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, until the door opened and the housekeeper came in carrying a heavy silver tray loaded with teacups, teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl.
“Oh thank goodness, Bertie,” Dame Beckwith said, “that’s just the thing. I’m afraid these girls have had a terrible shock and are now having an attack of nerves. They need hot tea with plenty of sugar.”
Helen, Daisy, and I were made to sit down. Shawls were draped over our shoulders and we were each given a cup of hot sweet tea as if we were invalids. Although I would have thought I’d had enough tea for one day I gulped the hot liquid gratefully. I could feel the chill in my bones dissipating with each mouthful, but laughing with Helen and Daisy had chased the cold away even more effectively than the tea.
“Now,” Dame Beckwith said briskly, “let me have the whole story from the beginning, one at a time. Why don’t you go first, Miss Sharp, as I believe you saw the shadow crows first?”
Shadow crows? Was that what they were? I wondered as Miss Sharp explained how she had realized right away that the crows were a “malevolent manifestation.” She described in some detail the mesmerism spell she had employed to divert them. “I had to use shadow runes,” she said in a low whisper.
Shadow runes? Hadn’t Mr. Jager said that shadow magic was strictly forbidden?
“Perfectly acceptable under the circumstances,” Dame Beckwith said briskly.
Mr. Bellows, when it was his turn, lavished praise on Miss Sharp’s brilliant deployment of the spell and added that all but three of the crows were effectively mesmerized.
“But those three broke away?” Dame Beckwith asked.
“Yes, they flew up the hill and attacked Daisy and Avaline. Thank goodness the bells rang.”
Nathan was then asked to describe what he had seen from the roof. He explained how he had recognized the crows as shadow demons because we’d read about them in Mr. Bellows’s class, and remembered that they could only be banished by the tolling of the bells. He’d run to the belfry and alerted the bell ringers on duty to ring a shadow-dispersing peal; then he’d run down, grabbing a fire poker from the fireplace in the Great Hall, and dashed out to see if he could help out on the ground, which was when he saw the Darkling standing over me.
“The Darkling must have summoned the crows,” Mr. Bellows said. “The birds must be their minions. I’m afraid we may have to call out the Hunt.”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting Mr. Bellows. “The Darkling wasn’t trying to abduct me. He saved me!”
Dame Beckwith’s eyes narrowed. “And what makes you say that, Miss Hall?”
I stared back at her, desperately trying to think of some way of explaining how I felt about the Darkling without giving away how we’d first met. But if I didn’t say something, Dame Beckwith would call out the Hunt to destroy him.
“Because he did it once before,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “He saved me from the fire at the Triangle Waist factory.”
I saw Helen and Daisy staring at me and then exchanging a look.
“I’m sorry I never told you,” I told them. “But since I’ve come here, I’ve tried to for
get about it. At the hospital, they tried to convince me that I’d imagined the boy with the wings who’d saved me, but I recognized him the first night when I saw him in the woods, and today I recognized the man in the Inverness cape who I saw at the Triangle factory.”
I told them everything then: about seeing the man in the Inverness cape at the factory, and how the fire had burst through the airshaft windows and raged across the factory floor—the flames like burning rats and the smoke like the crows we’d seen today. I found myself telling them about the girls pinned between the flames and the glass windows—how they’d been forced to jump or be burned alive. I told them about how the boy had helped me and Etta and Tillie up to the roof, but the crows had swooped down on us and the man in the Inverness cape had pushed Tillie off the roof and the boy had saved my life. I even told them about the months in the hospital and how I’d seen the man in the Inverness cape there, and again below my window at my grandmothers, and then today inside the Wing & Clover.
As soon as I mentioned the Wing & Clover, Nate blanched. I caught his eye and shook my head to let him know that I wouldn’t give away that he’d been there, too, but he spoke up anyway.
“I saw him there—a man in a dark cloak and hat. His face was shadowed and somehow strange.” Nate frowned and shook his head. “I can’t somehow recall what he looked like.”
“Did he speak to you?” Dame Beckwith asked, her eyes looking truly frightened.
“Yes . . .” Nate answered haltingly, as if trying to remember something in a dream. He scratched his head, looking puzzled. “Funny thing, I can’t seem to recall what we talked about.”