And what about Helen?
“So they were able to get the bullet out?” I said, interrupting Daisy’s chatter. “And Helen’s going to be all right?”
Daisy’s eyes immediately filled up with tears. Nathan lifted his head and looked from Daisy to me, silently mouthing the word “out.” Daisy was getting to her feet.
“We should leave Helen to get some rest,” she said, fleeing out the door. I followed her. As soon as we were in the hall Daisy burst into tears. Nathan followed, closing the door behind him and pulling us farther down the hall.
“What is it?” I cried.
“Helen is going to be fine,” Nathan said in a steely voice that brooked no argument.
“It’s just . . . the bullet that hit her spine . . .” Daisy sobbed. “She may never walk again.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
“She will walk again,” Nathan said through gritted teeth. “If I have to take her to every doctor in Europe.” He glared at both of us, silver eyes flashing, as though daring us to contradict him. When we didn’t, he nodded once, turned on his heel, and stomped back down the hall to Helen’s room.
“The doctor says we won’t know for months whether Helen will regain the use of her legs,” Daisy said soberly. I realized now that her nervous, bright chatter had been to avoid the issue of Helen’s condition. “Nathan won’t hear it.”
“Maybe it’s what he needs,” I said. “Someone to take care of . . .” I paused. His inability to help Louisa had driven a wedge into his soul that had let the shadows in. If Helen never recovered . . . I banished the thought from my head. “It will keep the shadows away,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “Helen will make sure of it.”
Daisy nodded and wiped her eyes. “If anyone can, it’s Helen. And we’ll be there to help her.”
I squeezed Daisy’s hand and turned to go back to Helen’s room, but saw Raven and Marlin coming down from the roof. They looked worried.
“We have to go,” Raven said, grabbing my arm.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are we under attack?”
“Not exactly,” Raven answered.
I heard a commotion coming from downstairs. Voices raised. Miss Sharp shouting. Something breaking.
I ran down the stairs, Raven and Marlin at my heels. In the parlor I found Miss Sharp, Mr. Bellows, Agnes, and Miss Corey on one side of the room, and on the other, three women in black. I recognized them right away as the ladies who had interviewed me for admission to Blythewood. They still wore the same bird-crowned hats they had worn over a year ago. Didn’t they know it was no longer popular to sport dead birds on millinery? But as they turned toward me, the stuffed crows came to life and flew straight for us. Raven and Marlin tried to beat them off, but they were too small and quick. I felt a stuffed bird’s claws dig into my shoulder and suddenly couldn’t move.
“Avaline Hall,” Mrs. Ansonia van Hassel boomed, “I arrest you as an enemy of the Order.”
“You can’t arrest Avaline,” Miss Sharp said. “She and the Darklings saved our girls today!”
“And they saved the Order from disgrace and shame,” Agnes said. “The Council’s been infiltrated by tenebrae.”
“If the Woolworth Building had blown up, all your investments would have been destroyed,” Mr. Greenfeder said.
“Silence!” Mrs. van Hassel screeched. “You will all face charges of consorting with the enemies of the Order!” Mrs. van Hassel’s face, already red, turned purple. Kid Marvel, Omar, Delilah, and all the other madges and lampsprites had appeared in the doorway and were crowding into the parlor.
“Mr. Bellows,” Mrs. van Hassel called in a tremulous voice, “I charge you as a knight of the Order to defend us against these . . . these . . .”
“These good people?” Mr. Bellows asked, moving between the women from the Order and the crowd. Miss Corey and Miss Sharp went to stand on either side of him. Agnes and Mr. Greenfeder joined them. I felt a swelling of gratitude for my friends’ loyalty, but I also didn’t want to see anyone else get hurt tonight.
“I’ll go with you if you release Raven and Marlin,” I said. “And the other magicals. You can arrest me. Just leave my friends alone.”
“Arrest a Hall! I don’t think so!”
The voice came from behind the crowd of madges. I saw them edge apart at the sweep of an ivory walking stick to let my grandmother make her slow but stately way into the room.
“No one will be arresting my granddaughter, especially not you, Ansonia van Hassel. Who let those lecherous men into Blythewood? Who advised the Council to sink all the Order’s money into the Titanic? And then, as if we hadn’t learned our lesson, into the Woolworth Building?”
“Your granddaughter is a Darkling, Elvira,” Mrs. van Hassel said.
My grandmother turned to look at me.
“It’s true, Grandmother,” I said, trying to meet her gaze even though I was still held frozen by the stuffed crow’s grip. “My father was a Darkling.”
A tremor passed over my grandmother’s face. Of course she would disown me now.
“So that was why poor Evie kept you hidden all those years,” she said, her eyes glittering like the jet beads on her dress. “But wings or no wings, you’re still a Hall.” She snapped her fingers. The stuffed crow released its grip from my shoulder and fell lifeless to the floor. The ones holding Raven and Marlin collapsed as well.
“There will have to be an investigation and a special meeting of the Council, Elvira,” Mrs. van Hassel began.
“Yes, there will,” my grandmother replied, raising her lorgnette to her eyes and looking hard at Ansonia van Hassel. “I’ll be interested to know what they make of your investment policies. And now, my granddaughter looks tired. It’s time you came home, Avaline.”
“But I can’t leave Helen, Grandmother, or—” I looked around at the group in the parlor—Raven and Marlin, my teachers, Kid Marvel and Omar and all the madges. “Or my friends.”
My grandmother looked around at the bedraggled group of schoolgirls and Darklings and magical beings and sighed. “Very well, then. I suppose Helen should be moved to our house anyway. Invite your friends along. We have plenty of room.”
37
I WAS SO relieved that my grandmother had accepted that I was a Darkling and welcomed my friends into her house, I would have happily spent the rest of the spring waiting for the Council’s meeting at the mansion on Fifth Avenue. But the next morning we received a wire from Dame Beckwith.
Have heard reports of your bravery Stop Am very proud Stop Can you forgive an old woman for being so blind? Stop Gillie will be waiting at the station for the 5:02 train Stop
I took the telegram up to Helen’s room, where Nathan was forcing toast and tea on her.
“For Bells’ sake, Nathan, you don’t have to feed me my toast. It’s my legs that don’t work, not my hands!”
“Oh good!” Daisy said, coming in. “Helen’s feeling like herself this morning.”
“I am always myself,” she said to Daisy. “It was you who were someone else—” She halted as Nathan paled.
“Clearly I’m not needed here,” he said, getting up.
“No, Nathan,” I said. “You should see this, too. I’ve gotten a telegram from your mother.”
I handed Nathan the telegram but Helen nimbly plucked it from his hands. A short tussle ensued, which I thought might result in them tearing the paper but ended with them leaning their heads together to read it.
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear Gillie’s all right,” Helen said. “Of course you must all go back.”
“I’m not sure I can go back,” I said. “Not with everyone knowing I’m a—”
“A hero,” Helen said, looking at me with shining eyes. “You should have seen yourself flying out of that building with the bomb. You looked like Inez
Milholland leading the suffrage parade on Washington!”
I smiled at Helen. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier—and I’m glad you’re able to accept what I am, but the others—”
“Can get stuffed if they don’t!” Daisy cried.
“That’s right,” Nathan said gruffly. I looked at my friends.
“You three standing by me means the world to me, but I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that. I’m half-Darkling. I owe something to them, too. I can’t belong to the Order if they regard the Darklings as enemies.”
“But they won’t be able to after what’s happened,” Daisy said. “You heard what your grandmother said last night. There’s going to be an investigation.”
“Yes,” Helen said, “when they see what the Darklings and madges did to save our girls they’ll have to reconsider. They’ll have to reconcile now. You might as well go to Blythewood until they finish the investigation and convene.”
“But I want to stay here with you,” I told Helen.
“Nathan can look after me,” Helen said, looking impishly at Nathan. “I’ll be up in a few weeks.”
As usual it was difficult to argue with Helen’s logic. I left for Blythewood that day, traveling by train with Daisy, Etta, and a dozen more girls—Dolores, Beatrice, Cam, Susannah, Mary, and Myrtilene among them. They crowded the train car and were so loud and raucous as they recounted the previous day’s events that the conductor threatened to throw us off at Beacon if we didn’t act like ladies.
“This, sir,” Dolores Jager declaimed in a stentorian voice, “is how ladies behave.”
Beatrice beamed at her newly vocal sister. “Papa will be so proud,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “We averted an international crisis. Imagine what would have happened if that crazy man had assassinated the archduke!”
“It turned out the archduke wasn’t even there,” Dolores said modestly. “But it would have been a great loss if Mr. Tesla had died.”
“Not to mention Mr. Gibson,” Myrtilene averred. “There would have been no more Gibson Girls!” She patted her own upswept pouf.
I was amazed and heartened by the resiliency of my classmates, but looking out the rain-splattered window at the fog-bound river (upon which I knew the changelings were traveling back to the Blythe Wood) I felt somehow removed from their gaiety. It wasn’t that they knew what I was—they all professed delight and even jealousy (from Cam at least) that I possessed a pair of wings under my corset—but that I didn’t feel as certain of the outcome of the Council meeting as they did. And I didn’t like going back to Blythewood without Helen.
Some of my melancholy was dispelled by seeing Gillie at the station. He had brought the wagon to accommodate the crowd of girls and decked it out with violets and apple blossom boughs and a large purple-and-green banner that read “Hail the Conquering Heroines!”
The girls crowded in excitedly, shoving each other to make room for me, but when Gillie suggested I sit up front with him, I complied. I turned to him when he took his seat.
“You knew, didn’t you.”
His eyes turned a softer shade of green as he turned to me—the same spring green as the new leaves in the sycamore trees towering over River Road. Although it had rained all the way up on the train, the sky was blue here in Rhinecliff, and a soft breeze, sweet with the scent of apple blossom, wafted against my face. Looking into those bottomless green eyes—as deep and old as the forest—I realized what a silly question it was. A better one would have been what didn’t Gillie know.
But he answered me with all seriousness. “I knew who your mother loved and why she went away. I saw the war going on inside you. I saw what ye were—but I didna see what ye would become. No one could see that. But I see you now. Your mother would be proud of you.”
I felt tears sting my eyes, but before they could fall a breeze had caught them up and carried them away. Gillie made a soft clucking sound to the horses, but also, I thought, to me. It was the sound he made when he flew the hawks, to call them home. Above us I heard Eirwyn and Gwynfor echoing him. As the wagon started down River Road I felt, for the moment at least, that I was home. Not because I was returning to Blythewood, but because I was sitting beside a friend—and really, what other sort of home was there?
In the weeks to come, though, the particulars of what I would call home remained uncertain. Dame Beckwith contrived to install a sense of normalcy and routine to the last weeks of the term. Our teachers rushed to cover the term’s material. We worked hard to keep up with them. The ballroom was turned into a study hall, the mirrors taped over with diagrams and charts and timelines and color engravings of famous buildings and paintings we were supposed to memorize. Sometimes a girl might find herself humming a tune from Die Puppenfee, but then another girl would break into the Blythewood song, which began “Ring true, aim high!” and ended “Blythewood girls until we die!” sung to the tune of “La Marseillaise.”
Once a week the Fledgling League met in the Ravencliffe boathouse—we used rowboats now that the river wasn’t frozen—to compare notes on the progress of our Elders’ meetings. Our Darkling friends informed us that their elders had been invited to the Council’s meeting, and that the meeting was to be held at the Woolworth Building.
“I wonder why they chose that place?” Myrtilene asked. “I’d think it would give them all bad memories.”
“I think it’s a good sign,” Beatrice said. “It’s the place where the Darklings and Blythewood girls fought together. A symbol of our unity.”
“And it has ripping good views!” Cam said.
I noticed that Raven was silent and thoughtful during the conversation.
On nights when there wasn’t a league meeting, Raven and I flew to the Gunks together, wing tip to wing tip across the river. Some nights, we flew farther west over the Catskills and once as far as Lake Erie. Sometimes I wondered if we should keep flying west, far away from Blythewood and Ravencliffe, out to the Rockies, where Raven said there were great expanses of mountains where a Darkling could soar unobserved and even the humans didn’t do things according to anyone’s old ways. But we returned each night to watch the sun rise over the Hudson from our niche in the cliff. On one of those mornings I asked him what he thought about the choice of the Woolworth Building for the meeting of the Council and Darkling Elders.
“I think,” he said, “that van Drood had his reasons for wanting to blow up that particular building and that we’ll find out more at this meeting.”
We hadn’t talked about van Drood since Raven had been rescued from the dungeon at the Hellgate Club. When others mentioned him, his eyes would darken and he would turn away. Raven’s wings had healed, his own feathers growing over the imped feathers, and his scars had faded, but I suspected there were scars he carried inside from his time in that pit that I couldn’t see.
“When you were imprisoned,” I said now, “did you . . . hear van Drood?”
He shuddered, feathers rustling, and looked away from me. “Yes. He was inside my head, telling me terrible things.”
“That’s what he does,” I said. “He finds your weaknesses and then uses them to open up a crack in your soul to let the shadows in. He told me that my mother was afraid of me turning into a monster and that my father knew about me when he abandoned me. He made me feel like I was a monster.”
“And do you feel that way now?” he asked, still not looking at me. “Like a monster?”
“No,” I said, squeezing his hand. “My friends have stood by me even knowing what I am. Your friends have stood by me. You—” I cradled my hand around his cheek and turned him to face me. “You risked your life to save my friends. You’re not a monster—so how could I be one?”
In the first blush of dawn his skin was rosy and he looked very young. “He told me . . .” He swallowed and firmed his jaw. “He told me you loved Nathan.”
I almost laughed. ??
?Of all the things van Drood could have chosen, to pick something so—” I was going to say petty, but then I recalled what Dame Beckwith had said: Evil often grows out of such petty jealousies and resentments. Raven filled in the rest.
“True?”
“Don’t be silly! I don’t . . .” But I couldn’t say it with complete honesty. I was picturing Nathan skating on the ice, Nathan at the helm of the Half Moon telling me he loved me, me telling Nathan I loved him while he was under van Drood’s control . . . then Nathan carrying Helen down twenty-seven flights of stairs. “Nathan’s with Helen,” I said at last, even though I wasn’t sure their bond was romantic. “And I love you.” That was true, no matter what conflicted feelings I might have about Nathan.
“And I you,” Raven said, folding his wings around me. “That’s what got me through those weeks in the pit listening to van Drood in my head. It didn’t matter how much he tried to convince me you didn’t love me. Remembering how much I loved you kept me whole. Van Drood failed, just as he failed to blow up the Woolworth Building, because your friends and mine wouldn’t let their elders’ differences divide them. I think that’s why we’re meeting there. Besides, the Elders are happy about meeting someplace high up. They like to be able to see what’s coming.” He cupped my face with his hand and looked at me solemnly. “And so do I.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he stopped my mouth with a kiss so hard and urgent it kindled my wings into flames. They spread an orange-gold nimbus around us that rivaled the rising sun in the east.
38
IN SPITE OF Raven’s compelling arguments, I was less pleased than he with the choice of meeting place. I knew that the Order had invested in the building and was afraid that their intent was to show off their wealth and power. I was also startled to learn that Uncle Taddie had been summoned to the meeting, and worried that the Council planned to use him as an example of the harm that came to humans through contact with the fairies. When I went to visit Miss Sharp at her aunts’ home, she agreed, and was unsure if they could even get her uncle to leave Violet House. But when Taddie was shown a picture of the Woolworth Building he became very excited and determined to go. “It’s just like the clock tower Papa designed!” he exclaimed.